For disabled students, court is necessary crutch

AHMEDABAD: The central law on reservation for physically challenged candidates makes the criteria clear for admission to higher education, but it is never easy to implement them with resistance from within the system.
One Parimal Patel has approached Gujarat high court seeking directions to the medical colleges and regulatory authorities to fill up 3% seats in PG medical courses by giving admission to physically challenged candidates.According to him, looking at total number of seats which is 309, there should be nine seats reserved for the handicapped, but the regulatory authorities have allotted only three seats to physically challenged candidates.
The state government and regulatory authorities of medical colleges have opposed this demand. Further hearing on this issue is kept on August 13.
There are other interesting examples of efforts to deny benefits of reservation to handicap students in medical colleges. They now stand their chance to become doctors only after HC intervention. Three candidates for medical course - Atish Patel from Patan district, Jaydeep Thakkar from Ahmedabad and Ram Rahulkumar Devshibhai from Junagadh faced a peculiar problem. All three were adjudged to be 40% disabled due to polio and accordingly given certificates from the concerned district hospitals.
This made them eligible to be considered for the quota for the disabled when they applied for medicine course. However, when their disability was verified by the Board for admission in the reserved seats for loco-motor disabled candidates at BJ Medical college, their disability was found to be much less.
Alarmed with the difference in observations of panels, the students approached the high court. The HC ordered the civil surgeon of the Civil Hospital to constitute a medical board and to get these three candidates physically checked and submit the report.
Accordingly, the examination took place by this third body and all of them were found to be 40% disabled. Following this report, the high court directed the authorities to consider their candidature for medical seats in reserved category and the authorities later gave the PH Merit Numbers as per the rules and regulations. The court asked the admission committee to admit them in the next reshuffling.