The State Commission for Persons with Disabilities asked Utkal University to implement 3% reservation for disabled persons in appointment of teachers, on Tuesday. Accusing the university of ignoring them, disabled persons had moved the commission. Recently, the university announced recruitment to 51 teaching posts.

"The university can't deprive eligible candidates of jobs. Though it had announced to reserve eight posts for disabled, including backlogs, it has not done so in its latest advertisement for 51 posts. So I asked them to issue a corrigendum and reserve nine posts instead of eight for disabled candidates," said state disability commissioner Kasturi Mohapatra. "We welcome the commission's order. Now I am hopeful of getting a job as lecturer," said Anuj Kumar Sahu, a visually-challenged PhD scholar in Odia. Sahu has also cleared National Eligibility Test. There are eight backlog vacancies for the disabled in different subjects as the university has not recruited any disabled person since 1996. "The university authorities did not make the reservation criteria clear in the advertisement creating confusion," said Jaydev Palei, a job aspirant.

The commissioner has asked the university to distribute the nine reserved posts equally among three types of disabled - hearing impaired, visually and locomotive challenged. Deputy registrar Himanshu Rout said, "We have clearly mentioned in the advertisement that eight posts are reserved for persons with disabilities. We did not specify particular subject because we want to give fair chance to all. If we would have mentioned subject-wise vacancy then a number of disabled students would have been affected. We can shift vacant posts from one subject to another if not filled up."

Source: Times of India