Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission & Ors.
Background
The appellant, an MBBS graduate, suffers from dysgraphia (Writer's Cramp), a neurological condition that makes handwriting difficult. He was given a scribe for the 2017 Civil Services Examination but was refused one for the 2018 exam by the UPSC because the applicable rules allowed scribes only for blind candidates or those with locomotor disability/cerebral palsy with at least 40% impairment ("benchmark disability"): a threshold he did not meet. His challenges before the Central Administrative Tribunal and the Delhi High Court failed. During the Supreme Court proceedings, an AIIMS medical board confirmed he suffers from a genuine chronic neurological condition causing Writer's Cramp, rated at 6% impairment, meaning he was a "person with disability" but not a "person with benchmark disability" under the statute.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 draws a crucial distinction between "person with benchmark disability" (Section 2(r), generally requiring 40%+ impairment) and the much broader "person with disability" (Section 2(s)), which covers any long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment that, in interaction with barriers, hinders full and effective participation in society. The Court held that eligibility for reasonable accommodations like a scribe cannot be restricted only to candidates crossing the 40% benchmark threshold, doing so would wrongly conflate the two distinct statutory concepts and defeat the Act's broader object of "reasonable accommodation," which is an individualised duty requiring a case-by-case assessment rather than a rigid quantitative cut-off. Since the appellant's disability was medically confirmed and genuinely impaired his ability to write examinations, denying him a scribe would negate the rights guaranteed under the Act. The Court declared he was entitled to a scribe for the Civil Services Examination and any other government-run competitive exam, allowed the appeal, and set aside the Delhi High Court's order. It also directed the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to frame, within three months and in consultation with disabled persons and their organisations, proper guidelines for providing scribes to persons with disabilities based on individual need rather than a fixed benchmark percentage.
Lesson Learnt
A person does not need to cross a rigid "benchmark disability" percentage threshold to be entitled to reasonable accommodations like a scribe in examinations: the law protects the broader category of "persons with disability," and the real test is whether their condition genuinely hinders full and effective participation, assessed individually rather than through inflexible quantitative rules.