Provide equal transfer options to specially abled staff: HC to HVPNL

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has rapped the Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL) for insensitive and apathetic approach for denying equal transfer opportunities to specially abled employees.

The admonition came as Justice Harpreet Singh Brar directed amendment in transfer policies to ensure specially abled employees were given the same number of transfer options as their able-bodied counterparts, along with necessary changes to make office locations accessible, opportunities to be posted in their home districts and, wherever possible, at a location of their choice.

Allowing a writ petition filed by two engineers with locomotor disabilities, Justice Brar directed HVPNL and other authorities to “ensure that the office location where an employee with disabilities is posted has requisite assistance readily available; and the distance between residence and workplace be considered before dealing with transfer matters pertaining to employees with disabilities”. The needful was directed to be done within two months followed by a compliance report to be filed in the Registry.

The matter was brought to Justice Brar’s notice after the employees sought the setting aside of a communication made by HVPNL whereby employees with benchmark disabilities were provided fewer options of offices for transfer than their able-bodied colleagues.

The Bench was told that the first petitioner was posted as Junior Engineer at Rohtak with 40 per cent locomotor disability, while the second was an Assistant Executive Engineer serving in Daulatabad with 80 per cent permanent locomotor disability. Both contended that they were covered under the ‘Protected Category’ of the Model Online Transfer Policy notified by the state on May 23, which HVPNL had adopted in entirety.

An online transfer drive was initiated by the Chief Engineer on July 16. But it was found that while able-bodied employees were given 392 transfer options, the first petitioner with benchmark disability was given only 15. Similarly, the second petitioner’s able-bodied counterparts had 127 options, while he was shown only six.