UGC Rejects Plea for Braille Question
Paper
The UGC hasn’t accepted
the request of a person with multiple disabilities seeking Braille question
paper to take the UGC National Educational Testing (NET) exams for the last 2
years.
Despite a revised
guideline under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Department of
Disability Affairs, which states that persons with disabilities can choose
their own mode to write exams, the UGC denied Miranda Tomkinson a Braille
question paper, which he sought twice.
Addressing a presspersons
here on Monday, Miranda along with the Disability Legislation Unit (DLU),
South, Vidya Sagar office-bearers S S Smitha and Rajiv Ranjan said he feels
helpless as his Masters in Sociology could not earn him a job and has to still
depend on his kin for financial aid.
Smitha said Miranda has
applied for the exams for the third time and approached DLU for help. “We wrote
to UGC chairman on October 9, 2013 requesting Braille question paper along with
the revised norms of the Ministry of Social Justice for conducting written exams
with persons with disabilities issued on Feb 26, 2013.
“As the Disability
Legislation Unit (DLU) did not get a reply from UGC, we approached the State
commissioner for persons with disabilities and Chief Commissioner for Persons
with Disabilities, Government of India,” Smitha said.
Following this, the
office of the State commissioner for person with disabilities, Tamil Nadu
issued a notification on October 25 directing UGC to provide the Braille
question paper to Tomkinson. The office of the Chief Commissioner of
Disabilities too issued a similar direction. But UGC never responded and then
DLU met the registrar of Madras University to intervene in the matter. The
registrar promised to take up the issue with higher authorities at UGC.
The Madras University
refused to share the correspondence with UGC and later informed orally that UGC
could not provide Braille question paper in NET 2013 exam as it is a policy
decision and the request could be considered for the next examination.
Curiously,
Tomkinson got similar explanations from the UGC on both the earlier occasions
after he filed RTI applications, says Smitha.
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