DU to reserve seats for acid attack survivors

New Delhi: Moving a step towards giving disabled students an equal opportunity to study, the Delhi University is all set to implement the revised Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, in the admission process while following the reservation policy under the benchmark disabilities.

According to Anil K. Aneja, nodal officer of the DU equal opportunity cell, the varsity is moving towards the implementation and hopes to introduce the revised act at the earliest.

“The files are under process and if everything goes according to the flow, we will implement the reservation policy as per the new act which asks to reserve 5 per cent seats for a person with benchmark disability during admission. We will also try to comply with the 4 per cent reservation in employment provision,” Mr Aneja said.

In April, the University Grants Commission (UGC) had issued a notification asking all the Central universities to implement the said revised act. However, if DU is able to implement the revised act by this year, then it is likely to become the first varsity in the country to reserve seats for acid attack victims and dwarfs, among others, for the first time. So far, as per the previous Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, three per cent seats were reserved for seven categories.

“Seats for dwarfs, acid attack victims, and many other disabilities have been included in that one per cent of combined reservation for locomotor disability as per the revised act. As far as hostel admissions are concerned, we already have five per cent reservation policy for disabled students,” the nodal officer added.

Nearly 1,000 students take admission in DU every year under the “Persons with Disabilities” (PwD) category in various undergraduate and postgraduate courses and in the school of open learning. The varsity is also trying to link the benefits of the government schemes to students with disabilities.

“We recently held an event where we gave smartphones and smart canes to 180 students costing Rs 1,000 each under the ADIP (assistance to disabled persons) scheme. While the smartphones help the students with their reading and writing needs, the smart cane helps them with independent mobility as it has a sensor system,” Mr Aneja added.

In a bid to help the disabled students, the varsity also started special centres last year for providing assistance to such students in both North and South campuses..