*Representational Picture shows law students in Ranchi (Story based on a report published by a Hindi daily-Prabhat Khabar)

Persons with disability have a reason to raise hands against many National Law Universities in the country, indicates the claim made by a study revealing that all most all law collages are not following government rules in so far as reservation of persons with disability quota are concerned.

As per the Centre for Disability Studies and Health Laws, 2017(CDHCL), the government's amended law providing five percent reservation to disabled students was not followed by some National Law Universities. Only 9 of the total 22 law universities had fully honoured this law. 

A Lucknow based law student says that these national law universities located in different parts of the country aimed to educate, train and produce competent and able lawyers. They were supposed to abide by the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act,2016. This Act directs them to keep five percent of seats reserved for persons suffering from a disability.

This rule of the government had to be followed by all government-aided educational institutions. Historically, persons with a disability had three percent reservation in accordance with the 1995 Act. This rule was amended in 2016 by the apex court in response to a PIL.

Even this three percent reservation for persons with disabilities was not adhered to by a number of educational institutions. However, due to the intervention of the Disabled Rights Group and others, they succeeded in getting reservation percentage increased from three to five percent. 

Almost one year after this amended law came into force, Shashank Pandey, a student of Lucknow based Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, conducted a study. The data gathered by him showed that 9 of 22 National law Universities followed five percent reservation meant for persons with disability. The result was divided into three categories.

The first category comprised those universities who had only incorporated percentage of reservation in their admission list, claims a report quoting this study. These universities were:National Law University,Jodhpur,Hidayatullah National Law University,Raipur,Gujarat National Law University,Gandhi Nagar,Dr Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University,Lucknow,Chanakya Law University,Patna,National University of Advanced Legal Studies,Kochi,Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University,Visakhapatnam,National Law University,Delhi , Mumbai,Aurangabad and Nagpur.

The second type comprised universities who had only mentioned it in its booklet. They were Dr Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University and Chanakya National Law University. They were violating the reservation law, claims the study adding that they were just following the old 3 percent quota rule. 

The third category includes those three universities who had printed reservation scheme, number of reserved seats and number of admitted in reserved seats.

These universities were National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Maharastra National Law University, Nagpur and Maharastra National Law University, Aurangabad.

Also five other top Universities-National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, NALSAR, Hyderabad, Rajiv Gandhi National Law University of Law, Patiyala, Himachal Pradesh National Law University, Shimla and Dharamshastra national Law University,Jabalpur were following 5 percent reservation policy in letter and spirit. 

 

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