Be liberal with pleas for colleges for disabled students: Bombay HC to Maha govt

The Bombay High Court has quashed the Maharashtra government's order rejecting a Pune-based trust's proposal to set up a college for students with speech and hearing disabilities, observing that such pleas need to be considered "seriously and liberally". A division bench of Justices N H Patil and G S Kulkarni was hearing a petition filed by the 'Sadguru Saibaba Seva Trust' challenging the government's decision of striking down its proposal to set up a college specifically for students with speech and hearing disabilities.

According to the petition, the state rejected the proposal on the ground that the trust failed to keep Rs 7 lakh in a fixed deposit for five years, which is mandated as per a Government Resolution (GR) for setting up such institutions. The petitioner's lawyer, Uday Warunjikar, argued that the trust had kept the sum in fixed deposit for two years but failed to continue it further for another three years.

The bench, after hearing arguments in the case, said if the proposal to start a college for students with speech and hearing disabilities was a first in Maharashtra, then the state government should have considered the proposal "seriously and little liberally". The proposal should not have been rejected only on this ground of partial non-compliance with the GR, it said. The specific education to hearing and speech impaired students "would help them in many ways and provide them an opportunity to come up in the mainstream of the society," the court said.

The bench, while quashing and setting aside the order rejecting the proposal earlier this month, said the matter was required to be reconsidered by the state government. The court sent back the proposal to the government and asked it to consider it afresh, while accepting the rectified fixed deposit of five years submitted by the petitioner trust.

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