Kartik Kansal: A person can overcome his physical disability with his ability. One such story is of ISRO scientist Kartik Kansal who cleared the UPSC exam four times. Kartik Kansal is a resident of Roorkee in Uttarakhand. He is suffering from muscular dystrophy. In this disease, muscles become weak over time. Kartik has been on a wheelchair since the age of 14. Even after qualifying the UPSC exam four times, he did not get appointment for any service.
Karthik’s story has come to the fore at a time when the case of IAS Pooja Khedkar is at its peak, who is accused of passing the UPSC exam through fraud. Karthik has appeared for the UPSC exam a total of six times so far. He has been successful four times out of these. His rank (AIR) in 2019 was 813, which increased to 271 in 2021. This was his best performance so far. After this, it was 784 in UPSC-2022 and 829 in UPSC-2023. Despite this, he has not been allotted service in his three successful attempts, while the service allocation for the fourth attempt in 2023 is also pending.
Karthik is fighting his case in CAT
Karthik is currently fighting his case in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). The case is pending in CAT based on his UPSC result from the year 2021. Karthik proudly says that he is determined to fight. According to the 2021 UPSC notification, the disability criteria are based on two things – functional classification and physical requirement. During the allocation process, Karthik was told by the DoPT that his functional classification and physical requirement were not in accordance with the requirements of the service he had applied for.
Karthik fulfills all the physical requirements
Karthik meets all the physical requirements like seeing, sitting, reading, writing and talking. Karthik’s second preference was IRS, whose notification conditions also included muscular dystrophy. The 2021 notification includes columns accepting disabilities such as muscular dystrophy, both legs, both arms, one arm and one leg. According to DoPT, the notification accepts muscular dystrophy as an eligible condition for persons with disabilities for IRS service.
Not getting a chance is disappointing for Karthik
This is quite disappointing from the point of view of Karthik, who has qualified the UPSC exam four times despite his disability and meets almost all the disability criteria for the service. But still he has not been given a chance to serve. Karthik falls under the PwBD-1 category of disability in UPSC. Former 1985 batch IAS officer Sanjeev Gupta told ABP News about the matter that with a rank of 271 in the 2021 UPSC exam, Karthik could have easily got the service of his choice without any reservation.
Kartik’s brother Varun Kansal while talking to ABP News said that he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of 8, due to which he had to sit on a wheelchair after the age of 14. This disease was genetic and he could not do anything about it. He even had to face rejection many times in his life due to his disability.
(Input- Ahmed Bilal)
