The main legal point established in the judgment is that the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 mandates reservation for visually challenged candidates, and failure to provide such reservation contravenes the provisions of the Act.

Hemant Gupta, CJ.

The petitioner is a visually challenged person, who has a disability of 75% as declared by the District Medical Board. She has been suffering from Microphthalmia in the right eye and Coloboma of Iris in the left eye as per certificate (Annexure P-1). The petitioner after completion of Law degree (LL.B.), enrolled herself with the State Bar Council of Madhya Pradesh on 15.06.2013 and is a Member of District Bar Association, Jabalpur.

2. An advertisement was issued by the High Court on 02.08.2017 (Annexure P-7) for filling up of posts of Civil Judge Class-II (Entry Level) which included 47 posts for Un-reserved category, 13 for Other Backward Class, 15 for Scheduled Castes and 19 posts for Scheduled Tribes. The advertisement contemplated that 2% posts would be reserved for Orthopaedically Handicapped candidates. Since there was no reservation provided for visually challenged candidates, the petitioner submitted a representation, which was rejected vide communication dated 02.08.2017 (Annexure P-8). In fact, the petitioner had submitted a representation even in respect of previous selection process.

3. The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the reservation has to be provided in terms of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (for short “the Act”). The provisions of the Act mandate the reservation for the low vision and blind candidates. The petitioner refers to a Notification No.16-15/2010-DD-III dated 29th July, 2013 issued by the Government of India by which the posts have been identified for the persons with disabilities in Group A. As many as 881 posts have been identified, which can be filled from amongst the persons who have disability including the visual disability. The post of Judicial Magistrate falls at Serial No.466 (Annexure P-13). The relevant clause of the same reads as under :-

POSTS IDENTIFIED FOR BEING HELD BY PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES (OH including CP & LC, VH AND HH) IN GROUP A

Sl. No.	Designations	Physical Requirement	Categories of Disabled suitable for jobs	Nature of work performed	Working conditions/Remarks
1	2	3	4	5	6
***   ***   ***
466	Judges/ Magistrates Subordinate in Lower Judiciaries	S.ST.RW.C	OA.OL.BL.B.LV	Deals with Civil and Criminal cases by adopting established procedure both under Civil and Criminal Codes. Records evidence and pass necessary orders/ judgments.	The work is mostly performed inside. The work place is well lighted. The worker usually works alone. The VH category considered with appropriate software and bitter appliances (sic. better appliances) support. The OH category incumbents need to be considered with mobilaty (sic. mobility) aids and appliances

Abbreviations Used:

OH = Orthopaedically Impaired, CP = Cerebral Palsy, LC = Leprosy Cured, VH = Visually Impaired, HH = Hearing Impaired,

S=Sitting, ST=Standing, RW=Reading & Writing, C= Communication.

OA = One Arm, OL = One Leg, BL = Both Leg, B = Blind, LV = Low Vision.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioner has referred to a Supreme Court judgment reported as AIR 1993 SC 1916 (National Federation of Blind vs. Union Public Service Commission and others) as well as asserted that the order of rejection and denial of scribe is against the judgments of the Supreme Court reported as (2010) 7 SCC 626 (Govt. of India and Another vs. Ravi Prakash Gupta and Another) and (2013) 10 SCC 772 (Union of India and Another vs. National Federation of the Blind and others). Learned counsel also makes a mention that a SLP (C) No.17223/2015 (V. Surendra Mohan vs. State of Tamil Nadu and others) is pending before the Supreme Court arising out of an order dated 05.06.2015 passed by the High Court of Madras in WP No. 10582/2015 (V. Surendra Mohan vs. State of Tamil Nadu and others) denying reservatio