Medical aspirant with hearing impairment denied disability quota seat, moves HC

Kolkata: A medical aspirant from the state with a hearing impairment moved the Calcutta High Court after he was denied quota seat under Person with Disability (PwD) category on the basis of a report submitted by the SSKM Hospital which the petitioner found 'faulty' as there was no appropriate assistive device in the hospital to measure the level of his impairment.

The petitioner, Maheboob Laskar, a resident of Mograhat in South 24-Parganas cleared the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and now seeking an admission under PwD category as he has some problem in hearing. Laskar in his Writ petition at the Calcutta High Court alleged that SSKM Hospital has flouted the Medical Council of India (MCI) guideline where it said that all the candidates with hearing impairment must be examined with assistive device at the hospitals. But it was not done at the SSKM Hospital due to the unavailability of the device. As a result the examination in case of Laskar had not been conducted as per the MCI norms. The candidate eventually failed to achieve more than 40 per cent disability during his examination at the hospital which was one of the prerequisites to secure an admission in the undergraduate medical courses in the state.

Many candidates from the state who are seeking admission in a medical college under the same category have expressed their concern on how they would be examined when there is no device available at the SSKM Hospital to properly determine the level of their impairment.

In the writ petition, Laskar mentioned that the MCI Gazette notification dated February 5, 2019 says that "Persons with hearing disability of more than 40 per cent may be made eligible to pursue Graduate Medical Education and may be given reservation, subject to the condition that hearing disability is brought to a level of less than the benchmark of 40 per cent with the aid of assistive devices".

But at the time of verification of his disability certificate appropriate method was not followed at the SSKM Hospital and the petitioner he was not tested with device as recommended by the MCI, mentions the Writ petition.

The candidate has qualified the NEET obtaining total 113 marks out of 720 (around 42.49 percentile) with OBC category PH ranking of 2130 and all India ranking of 808060. The candidate claimed that he would have obtained more than 40 per cent disability criteria, had he been examined by the proper device.