The Maharashtra government has identified 4,917 posts to be filled by promotion to employees with benchmark disabilities, the Bombay high court (HC) was informed last week.

Advocate generalAshutoshKumbhakoni informed the division bench of justice UjjalBhuyan and justice MadhavJamdar that the government has identified 4,917 posts from 5,593 cadres to be filled by promotion of employees with disabilities and that such posts are yet to identified from 676 cadres.

Kumbhakoni said that the chief secretary, on July 14, issued instructions to all government departments to form departmental promotion committees for promoting employees with disabilities in terms of the proviso to section 34 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. He added that the exercise should be complete in six weeks.

Kumbhakoni was responding to a bunch of petitions filed through advocates VinodSangvikar, SugandhDeshmukh and MahendraShingade, by persons with disabilities complaining about denial of reservation-in-promotion to Group-A and Group-B posts.

Acting on their petitions, the HC on November 3, 2020 stayed the process for finalising promotions to Group-A and Group-B posts in some departments after noticing that the right to reservation in promotion of physically challenged persons was recognised by the Supreme Court, and a proposal for identifying the posts and working out modalities for providing such reservation was already placed before the state cabinet for approval.

The HC had thereafter also refused to vacate the stay on January 15 this year by observing that the promotion process cannot be allowed without securing the rights of the petitioners  employees with benchmark disabilities. The general administration department had renewed the plea claiming that the Apex court had subsequently thought it fit to place the matter of reservation-in-promotion for persons with benchmark disabilities for review before a larger bench.