Blindness no bar for 5 UGC-NET qualifiers

Five visually impaired students of the Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) have cracked the National Eligibility Test (NET), an exam to determine eligibility for assistant professors and junior research fellowships, a varsity official said today.

One of them to clear the test is budding singer Muskan Thakur, who was declared as a "youth icon" of the election commission for the last year's state assembly election.

This is for the first time that five visually impaired students of the university have cleared the UGC-NET 2018, the results of which were declared yesterday, said professor Ajai Srivastava, the HPU nodal officer for disability affairs.

Apart from Muskan (music), the others who qualified are Anuj Kumar (economics); Vinod Sharma and Jasbir Singh Lubana (political science); and Ajai Kumar (history); along with another differently abled student, Priyanka Thakur (law), he said.

The professor said over 50 differently-abled, including 12 visually impaired students, were studying in the university. All such students are getting free education since 2015, following court orders on a public interest litigation (PIL), he added.