[Via Shanker Sampangi]
Caste signifies social deprivation in the society and disability signifies physical and psychological deprivation. The condition of disability is prone to double oppression in the case of socially deprived sections including women. The layers of oppression need to be seriously understood and enough care should be taken to provide appropriate provisions of justice to relive the oppressed from the clutches of castiest culture. Justice is not to provide equal opportunities to all the Disabled in an unequal and hegemonic society but to provide appropriate provisions to raise the ability of every individual to do the same job with an aim of achieving equality at large. In this regard, EFLU seems to be purposefully creating hurdles to the marginalized Disabled sections of people under the disabled quota.
In the advertisement of Teaching and Non Teaching Posts, EFLU (The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad) reserved the disability positions following the reservation criteria for SC, ST and OBC within the Disability category in both the 2009 and 2012 (30th Dec, The Hindu) notifications. But the administration has gone back on implementing the reservation within the Disability Category by issuing a corrigendum. This is a grave injustice to the disability candidates from the socially deprived communities. It is impossible for Disabled aspirants belonging to Dalit Bahujan and Tribal backgrounds to compete with the Disability aspirants from the upper castes. The Disabled Students from the upper castes are generally from the elite class who has privileges like access to corporate education, technical aids, training etc; while the Dalit Bahujan and Tribal students do not have access to even basic education and other support. Therefore there exists a huge gap between the marginalized disabled students and the upper caste disability students.
Unfortunately, the present administration changed the existing disability reservation rules of the university against the interests of the Marginalized Disabled students. As a result, all the Teaching and NonTeaching positions will go to the upper caste Disabled Students. This act of administration exposed its Anti-Reservation stance and Anti-Dalit Bahujan and Tribal Disabled Students. This act of the University is supported by the Disability Cell of the University as the members of the cell did not even allow for a discussion on this matter and clearly showed their Anti-Reservation attitude. The Cell said that the issue should be discussed in the SC, ST cell but not in the cell for the Disabled and thus denied the right of Dalit Disabled students to speak.
We would like to remind them that they and their cell are part of the caste based Indian society. We resist the implementation of the hidden agenda of upper castes of this university.
Our Demands
1. We demand the VC to cancel the present advertisement corrigendum dated 12/01/2013.
2. To fulfill the reservation and roster points of PWD within the category wise.
3. To fill all the SC, ST and OBC backlog vacancies before any general recruitment.
~ TSA, DABMSA, PDSU, TVV, BSF–EFLU
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