Civil Services - Disability Quota- Formation of Independent Expert Medical Board in case of conflicting opinions
Bench: Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Madhu Jain
Case No.: W.P.(C) 13162/2025 & CM APPL. 53924/2025
Case Title: Shubham Agarwal v. Union of India and Ors
Date of Decision: October 6, 2025
Neutral Citation: 2025:DHC:8847-DB
Cases Referred: Department of Personnel and Training v. Kore Nihal Pramod (Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 17995/2025).
Post script
- Revision in judgement dated October 06, 2025- The DHC revised the judgement vide its order 24.11.2025 at the request of petitioner herein to have independent medical experts on medical board who were not from any of the hospitals who conducted earlier test fearing bias.
- Note: This matter was subsequently challenged before Supreme Court by UOI and UPSC vide SLP(C) 13947/2026 and the SC was pleased to set aside this impugned DHC judgement and impugned DHC order 24.11.2025 vide its order on 22 May 2026, after the Petitioner herein failed to appear before the medical boards several times. (see our post dated 22 May 2026).
Summary & Brief Background
The petitioner participated in the Civil Services Examination 2024 under the Persons with Benchmark Disability (PwBD) category, claiming a permanent hearing impairment exceeding the 40% benchmark. He successfully cleared the examination, securing an All India Rank of 1001. On May 27, 2025, he underwent an initial mandatory medical examination at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where a medical report dated May 30, 2025, declared him unfit for appointment after measuring his disability at a mere 1%.
Aggrieved by this assessment, the petitioner preferred an appeal before the statutory Appellate Disability Medical Board constituted at the Army Hospital (Research & Referral), Delhi. The Appellate Board subjected him to an exhaustive clinical examination between July 3, 2025, and July 11, 2025, ultimately determining that he suffered from a 67.84% hearing disability.
Instead of acting upon the Appellate Board's findings, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) issued an email directive on August 5, 2025, ordering the petitioner to report to Smt. Sucheta Kriplani Hospital (SSKH), Lady Hardinge Medical College, for a third medical evaluation. The petitioner approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Principal Bench, New Delhi, under O.A. No. 3093/2025 to challenge the validity of this additional check. On August 21, 2025, the Tribunal directed the petitioner to comply with the third medical review, while provisionally permitting him to join the training program in the interim. Seeking relief from the directive forcing a third medical test, the petitioner approached the Delhi High Court.
Core Arguments & Institutional Contradiction
The Finality of Appellate Checks: The petitioner contended that under the established Civil Services Examination Rules, the assessment rendered by the statutory Appellate Disability Medical Board is final and binding. He argued that the state cannot systematically override the definitive findings of specialized appellate boards to demand endless cycles of examination based on administrative whims. Furthermore, the petitioner distinguished his case from the Supreme Court precedent in Kore Nihal Pramod, explaining that the Apex Court had ordered a neutral panel only because of a direct contradiction where an appellate board had declared a candidate unfit but a subsequent High Court-ordered evaluation declared them fit.
The Variance of High Magnitude: The respondents defended the third test order by exposing a massive contradiction between the two state-run medical evaluations. They highlighted that the initial AIIMS board recorded a negligible 1% impairment layout, while the Army Hospital (R&R) panel calculated a severe 67.84% hearing disability. The state argued that this massive mathematical variance rendered a clarifying, independent third assessment essential to make a final recruitment decision.
Key Issues Addressed
- Whether an appointing authority can legally subject a PwBD candidate to a third medical examination when there is a massive conflict between the initial medical board and the statutory appellate board.
- What legal weight and finality must be ascribed to an Appellate Disability Medical Board's report when its findings conflict extensively with initial assessments.
Observations & Findings of the Court
The Division Bench of the Delhi High Court disposed of the writ petition, moulding the relief to balance the structural rules of recruitment with fair medical verification:
- The Reality of a Significant Disparity: The Court recognized that while an Appellate Medical Board's findings are structurally designed to act as final and non-challengeable under standard conditions, the specific numerical indices in this case revealed a stark institutional anomaly.
- Validation of the Magnitude: The Bench observed that the conflict did not represent a routine, minor variation in medical interpretation, but rather a structural contradiction of exceptional proportions: "It is not a matter of just difference in medical opinion, but a difference of opinion of a high magnitude."
- Contextualizing Prior Assessments: The Court noted that earlier medical certificates submitted by the petitioner had independently pegged his permanent hearing disability at 40% and 44%. This made the initial AIIMS finding of 1% and the subsequent appellate finding of 67.84% highly inconsistent, justifying an independent tie-breaker review layout.
- The Balanced Apex Court Model Adopted: Rather than permitting the DoPT to unilaterally select a single local hospital for the third evaluation, the High Court invoked the equitable process mapped out by the Supreme Court in Kore Nihal Pramod. The Bench held that the evaluation must be performed by a jointly constituted, high-level composite independent board to ensure strict transparency.
Directions Issued
- The petitioner’s third medical evaluation layout was modified. The Court ordered the constitution of a fresh, specialized three-member Expert Medical Board specifically tracking hearing disabilities.
- The Board will consist of three independent experts: one doctor nominated by the Director of AIIMS, one nominated by the Director General of the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), and one nominated by the Chief of the Army Research and Referral Hospital, New Delhi.
- To preserve absolute neutrality, the Court directed that the respective medical chiefs must not nominate any individual doctors who have previously examined the petitioner in the earlier rounds.
- The respective institutions are requested to formally constitute the specialized board within two weeks, and the Board must deliver its final binding opinion regarding eligibility within one week of conducting the examination.
Paragraph 15 of our Order dated 06.10.2025 shall now read as under: “15. The third examination of the petitioner shall be conducted by a Board of doctors having specialisation in the field of assessing hearing disability. One member of the Board would be nominated by the Medical Superintendent of the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, one by the Director General of the CGHS, and the third by the Medical Superintendent of the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, New Delhi. While nominating the doctors to the Board, we request the Medical Superintendents/DG of the respective hospitals to not nominate the doctors who have already examined the petitioner in the earlier rounds/medical examinations. We further request the Medical Superintendents/DG to constitute the Medical Board within a period of two weeks from today and for the Medical Board to give its final opinion within a period of one week of the examination of the petitioner.”