Disability in Service – Constitutional & Statutory Obligation for Reemployment
The Appellant – Driver who has suffered disability of colour blindness while in service – was prematurely retired from service on medical grounds without any meaningful effort by the Corporation to explore his suitability for alternate employment.
Even if colour blindness does not fall within the statutory definition of “disability” under Section 2(i) or “persons with disability” under Section 2(t) of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the employer is still bound to provide reasonable accommodation and cannot terminate employment without exploring alternate roles.
Section 47 of the Act of 2016 mandates that such an employee be shifted to another post with the same pay and service benefits and if no such post is available, be retained on a supernumerary post until one becomes available or until the date of superannuation.
While judicial restraint guards against overreach, it must not become an excuse for disengagement from injustice. When an employee is removed from service for a condition he did not choose, and where viable alternatives are ignored, the Court is not crossing a line by intervening, it is upholding one drawn by the Constitution itself. The employer’s discretion ends where the employee’s dignity begins.
When a disability is acquired in the course of service, the legal framework must respond not with exclusion but with adjustment. The duty of a public employer is not merely to discharge functionaries, but to preserve human potential where it continues to exist. The law does not permit the severance of service by the stroke of a medical certificate without first exhausting the possibility of meaningful redeployment. Such obligation is not rooted in compassion, but in constitutional discipline and statutory expectation.
Judgment dated 1.8.2025 of the Supreme Court of India in Special Leave Petition [Civil] No.36278 of 2017 of Ch.Joseph Vs. The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation and other
