Public welfare trust Umang Foundation will organise a film festival on disability, the first such programme in Himachal Pradesh, an organiser said here Sunday.

A total 19 national and international award winning short films will be screened at Portmore Government School Monday, foundation chairman Ajai Srivastava said in a statement.

For the visually impaired, disabled and underprivileged youth, life is often a confrontation, with challenges coming in multitudes unlike an abled man or woman. It is often left to the individual alone to face these barriers and rise above his or her disability. There are many stories of such people who challenged life and overcame their incapability, either on their own or with a little support.

For a group of 14 people, being able to recognise the creative side in them, has taken them across the world; recognition coming in all forms.

Denied a chance to appear for the IIT-JEE exams because he is vision impaired, an 18-year-old who scored 96% in his Class 12 CBSE has opted to study at Stanford University in the US. 

"I would love to pursue my studies in my country, but the depressing guidelines of IIT-JEE last year have made it impossible for blind students to appear in the JEE (joint entrance exam)," Kartik Sawhney, who scored 479 out of 500 in the Class 12 exam conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), told IANS.

The empowered committee constituted by Delhi University to solve the problems of disabled students on Tuesday proposed either to do away with structure of foundation courses or find alternative courses for them in the four-year undergraduate course, due to take off in coming July.

Students with disabilities may not have to study the foundation courses in Mathematics and Science, if recommendations by a Delhi University panel are implemented.

The committee, which had assessed impact of the implementation of the four-year undergraduate programme, sent its recommendations to the university administration on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court today directed Delhi University to file an affidavit explaining the measures being undertaken to safeguard the interests of persons with disabilities in the proposed four-year bachelor’s degree course.

“You put it an affidavit, the various measures being undertaken by you and their (petitioner’s) grievances and what steps you are taking to address it,” the apex court told the university’s counsel while posting the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.

Contrary to the tall claims made by the government that everything is being done to ensure specially abled community exercise its rights without any hurdles, the highly qualified but visually-impaired people are being discriminated against and are told, directly or obliquely, that they are useless for the society.