India's Supreme Court rules a person with a disability can be denied promotion if disability is a safety risk or makes person "unfit"

From The Telegraph in India:

NEW DELHI, India -- A person can be denied promotion if he has a disability that makes him unfit to carry out his job in a higher post or poses a safety risk, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The court, however, made it clear that a disability in itself cannot bar a person from promotion, as laid down by the disabilities act of 1995.

However, the court added that the act was not intended to jeopardise the safety of the public, the disabled employee himself or his co-employees, or the safety of the employers’ equipment or assets. Nor was the law aimed at accepting reduced standards of safety and efficiency merely because an employee suffered from a disability.

“If promotion is denied on the ground it will affect safety, security and performance, then it is not denial of promotion merely on the ground of disability but is denial by reason of the disability plus something more, i.e. (an) adverse effect upon (the) employee’s performance of (the) higher duties or functions attached to the promotional post,” a two-judge bench said on Thursday.

The court was ruling on a railway ministry appeal against a high court decision asking it to promote a colour-blind person to a higher grade.

Devender Kumar Pant was appointed lab assistant in the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in 1972. He was promoted to junior research assistant in 1977 and senior research assistant in 1983.

In 1997, the ministry promoted him to chief research assistant on condition he get a medical certificate stating he was not colour blind. Pant moved the Lucknow bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal, asking it to quash the part of the order requiring him to produce the certificate, and other orders asking him to appear before medical officers.

The tribunal dismissed his case in May 2005, ruling that the ministry order was in keeping with job requirements and was in his own interest and that of other employees. It held that unless Pant obtained the fitness certificate, he would not be meeting the medical standards for the post.

Allahabad High Court, however, upheld Pant’s appeal, ruling that promotion could not be denied merely on the ground of disability unless the employer was exempted from certain provisions of the 1995 act by a notification. No such notification exempted the RDSO.

The Supreme Court, upholding the ministry appeal, also noted that the law often treated people with different disabilities differently.

For example, a provision of the act reserves jobs for people with blindness, low vision, hearing impairment, locomotor disability or cerebral palsy, but not for those with mental retardation or illness.

The court also said that colour blindness could not be construed as a disability under the 1995 Act, since it did not amount to blindness or low vision. So, it was doubtful whether a colour-blind person could claim benefits under the act.