RailEnquiry

Chennai: The Madras high court has ruled in favour of a wife of a dead Southern Railway employee who was denied appointment in his place on compassionate grounds because she was a diabetic.Pointing out that diabetes usually has no impact on an individual’s ability to do a particular job, the court said, “In most cases the employer may not even know that his employee has diabetes.As the impact of diabetes and its management varies among individuals there cannot be a blanket ban on giving public employment to persons with diabetes.”The court upheld the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal which had quashed the decision  of  the Southern Railway, denying the widow a job after a medical examination showed she was diabetic.Arockiammal had applied for a job on compassionate grounds after her husband , a commercial clerk with the Southern Railways, died in  2010. But was told in vague terms after her medical examination in 2011 that she was unfit on medical grounds.On her representation, another medication examination was conducted in June 2012. And this time she was told she was being denied a job as her blood sugar was high. The woman then approached CAT, which allowed her application.  

Diabetic wins battle against railways

Coming down hard on Southern Railway for denying the widow of an employee a job in his place because she diabetic and the disorder was “chronic and progressi­ve”, the Madras high court said it had failed to establish its case.

While dismissing the petition filed by the Southern Railway challenging the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal  which had ruled in favour of the Arockiammal, a division bench comprising Justices R. Banumathi and T.S. Sivagnanam said going by medical experts diabetes was only a condition in which the body failed to utilise the ingested glucose properly.

It also noted that  there was a strong school of thought that a diabetic was not suffering from a disease, but only a disorder that could be managed. Quoting a  2011  survey it said 62.4 million were diabetic in the country,  and this figure could rise to 110.1 million by 2030.

Recalling that Arockiammal’s husband was a commercial clerk with Southern Railway when he died in  2010 and that she too had merely done her plus two, it said, “ In the given circumstances one can reasonably conclude that she would have been unaware that her blood glucose level was higher than the acceptable norms.”

In the judges’ view it was unfair of the railway administration to reject her candidature based on a single blood test. “To deny employment to her on speculation about what might occur in future is unreasonable. Medical experts state that blood glucose levels fluctuate throughout the day, which is also the case of people with diabetes, and one test cannot be an assessment of the overall health of a person with diabetes,”  they added.