S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.

1. The appellant, in this Letters Patent Appeal is aggrieved by the judgment of a learned Single Judge, dismissing his petition W.P.(C)447/2013 under Article 226 of the Constitution of India wherein a challenge was laid to Section 33 of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation), Act 1995 ("PWD Act") as being unconstitutional to the extent that it excludes persons with mental illness for the purpose of job reservations. It was also challenged that there was no compensatory mechanism - in terms of time lost while fighting the disability and inter alia sought other consequential reliefs. The impugned judgment rejected the writ petition holding that no statutory or constitutional right of the petitioner was violated.

The facts

2. The Appellant has lived with acute phases of mental illness [psychiatric disorder i.e. a severe depression with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)] since 1996-97 until 2006; he belongs to a notified other backward class (“OBC”). Therefore, he was a “person with mental impairment/disability” within the meaning of the PWD Act. In terms of the IDEA scale, the disability suffered b