Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday refused to carve out a separate reservation for totally-blind candidates within the 1% quota earmarked for "blindness and low vision" under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. The court directed the state government to take concrete steps within four months to enhance the participation of such candidates in public employment.

A division bench of chief justice Alok Aradhe and justice Sandeep V Marne held that section 34(1)(a) of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act does not permit the sub-classification of quotas within benchmark disabilities (disabilities where people have a degree of impairment). The same rule applies to other benchmark disabilities such as the 'deaf and hard of hearing,' 'locomotor disabilities,' and 'intellectual disabilities'.

Petitioners had argued that despite the reservations, totally blind candidates were excluded from government services since employers overwhelmingly preferred low vision candidates. They demanded that half the posts under the 1% quota be reserved exclusively for the totally blind.

Rejecting this plea, the bench said that a 0.5% split between total and partial blindness would violate section 34 of the 2016 Act. The court added that they could not intervene to alter the scheme since the petition did not challenge section 33 or 34 of the Act, which deal with identifying the posts for reservation and the reservation itself.

However, the court noted that hardly any totally blind candidates had been recruited to state services, with the quota being consumed almost entirely by low vision candidates. Referring to a 2007 Government Resolution (GR) that granted priority to those with higher degrees of disability, including total blindness, the bench noted that the 2016 Act lacked any such provisions. The bench also examined GRs issued in April 2023 and July 2025 but found no specific measures to improve representation of the totally blind.

Directing corrective action, the bench ordered the state government to ensure that totally blind candidates are not disadvantaged in the recruitment process. "The state government shall also consider identification of certain categories of posts exclusively for blind candidates. Necessary steps shall be taken within a period of four months," the court said.

The court declined to intervene in the challenge of identifying posts that could be held by the totally blind. The bench said that the issue had not been resolved under the 2016 law.