Bhubaneswar: The Orissa High Court has set aside a Medical Assessment Board’s report denying disability status to a NEET candidate suffering from Thalassemia Trait and directed the Directorate of Medical Education and Training (DMET) to constitute a fresh board to assess her disability percentage within four days.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Chittaranjan Dash held that the Medical Assessment Board has wrongly confined its assessment to functional or locomotor disability, overlooking the statutory recognition of thalassemia as a specified disability under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
The petitioner, Harapriya Das, had appeared for NEET as a person with disability, relying on a certificate from the competent authority showing over 40 per cent disability.
She was subsequently referred to a Medical Board, which opined that her condition did not cause any significant functional disability. The petitioner challenged the finding before the HC.
Following an earlier order August 20, she made a representation to the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination authority, but an appellate authority subsequently held her ineligible for benefits under the Disabilities Act.
The latest Medical Assessment Board report, produced before the court by the DMET, stated that Thalassemia Trait is an asymptomatic carrier state without significant functional disability and therefore did not meet the prescribed criteria for a disability certificate.
The court, however, noted that the Schedule to the 2016 Act expressly includes thalassemia as a ‘blood disorder’ under specified disabilities.
It held that the Board could not assess the petitioner solely on the basis of functional or locomotor disability when thalassemia constitutes a separate category of specified disability under the statute.
The Bench said the Board’s conclusion that Thalassemia Trait did not constitute a disability was contrary to the Act, and set aside the report.
The DMET has been directed to constitute a fresh Medical Assessment Board and assess the petitioner’s percentage of disability to determine whether she meets the benchmark-disability eligibility criterion.
The court stressed that the exercise must be completed within four days as NEET counselling is underway.
The petitioner was represented by advocate Pabitra Kumar Dutta.
