HC to State: Be liberal with pleas for disabled students

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has quashed the Maharashtra government’s decision to reject a Pune-based trust’s proposal to set up a college for students with speech and hearing disabilities. While hearing the petition, the court observed that such pleas need to be considered “seriously and liberally.”

A division bench of Justices Naresh H. Patil and G.S. Kulkarni was hearing a petition filed by the “Sadguru Saibaba Seva Trust” challenging the government’s decision to strike down its proposal to set up a college for students with speech and hearing disabilities.

According to the petition, the state rejected the proposal on grounds that the trust failed to keep Rs 7 lakh in a fixed deposit for five years, which is mandated as per a government resolution for setting up such institutions. The petitioner’s lawyer, Uday Warunjikar, argued that the trust kept the amount in a FD for two years but failed to continue for another three years.

The bench, after hearing the arguments, said that if the proposal to start a college for students with speech and hearing disabilities was the first-of-its-kind in the state, the government should have considered it “seriously and a little liberally”.

The proposal should not have been rejected only on grounds of partial non-compliance with the GR, the court said. The specific education to hearing and speech impaired students “would provide them an opportunity to come up in the mainstream of society,” it said.