Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 12

Having met each other about 12 years ago and fallen in love, it took Prem Sagar (49) and Deepika (44) almost seven years to convince their families that despite their similar visual disability, they would be able to manage their lives well together.

While Prem Sagar is a lecturer of music at HMV College, his better half works with NGO Saksham that is into making talking books for visually impaired students.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative in Kerala, a group of visually challenged people including children entered the world of learning by touching the Braille dots here, as part of the ‘Vidyarambham’ ceremony on Vijayadasami day on Tuesday. As many as 12 persons belonging to the age group of eight to thirty were initiated into the world of letters by making them read the braille alphabets at a special ‘Vidyarambham’ (beginning of learning) programme held at Plamood in the city.

NAGPUR: When computers were a relatively new concept in Nagpur during the 1990s,Pramod Bhalerao, a physically challenged professor from Government Institute of Science, was in much demand, on account of his mastery over the machine. He decided to dedicate his expertise and vast knowledge of computers for the welfare of disabled and handicapped youths from the city.

Demanding filling of backlog of over 5,000 posts, employment according to capability and enhancement of pension, hundreds of physically-disabled persons, mostly Dalits, are sitting on a protest for more than past four months in Mansa.

Protesters said a panel meeting with Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal was held on June 18 where some of their demands were met on paper only as they turned to be ‘false promises’.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday asked Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to file reply within four weeks in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) highlighting the difficulty faced by blind persons in identifying currency notes and coins.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Manjula Chellur, while hearing a petition filed by National Association for the Blind (NAB), asked the central bank to submit its response within a month and allowed the petitioner to file a rejoinder within two weeks of RBI filing its reply.