Government should implement reservation for disabled: MP

New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tarun Vijay Wednesday demanded that the government fully implement reservation provisions for the disabled and apprise parliament about the action taken to fill up these vacancies.

Raising the issue in Rajya Sabha through a special mention, Vijay alleged that the government had become insensitive to the problems of the disabled.

"I demand that the government must implement reservation for the disabled immediately and action in this regard should be monitored and reported to parliament," Vijay said.

He said the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, obliged the central and state governments to reserve not less than three percent posts to persons with disabilities, of which one percent was to be reserved for persons suffering from blindness, low vision, hearing impairment, locomotor disability and cerebral palsy.

"The central government, however, did not implement the act after it came into force in 1996," Vijay said.

He said the National Federation of Blind moved the Delhi High Court which directed the government to fill up the vacancies for disabled in a time-bound manner through a centralised recruitment programme.

The government, he said, filed a special leave petition before the Supreme Court, which redirected it to fill up the backlog in a time-bound manner.

The government issued an office memorandum in 2009 announcing a special recruitment drive for clearing up the backlog by all the departments latest by March 2010, he said.

Kumar added that the government, however, took no special steps to fill up the vacancies except extending the deadline for the special recruitment drive which too ended in March this year without the backlog being cleared.