HT Special: Kaithal DC beats blindness with can-do spirit, vision

When IAS officer Ravi Prakash Gupta (44) was posted as deputy commissioner of Kaithal district six days ago, nobody quite knew what to expect from him. There was no dearth of naysayers in the corridors of power. The reason: his lack of eyesight.

When IAS officer Ravi Prakash Gupta (44) was posted as deputy commissioner of Kaithal district six days ago, nobody quite knew what to expect from him. There was no dearth of naysayers in the corridors of power. The reason: his lack of eyesight.

Kaithal deputy commissioner Ravi Prakash Gupta, who is visually impaired, attending to citizens on Saturday.(HT Photo)

But the 2007-batch IAS officer–probably the first visually-impaired bureaucrat to become deputy commissioner in the region–has not let blindness come in the way of his duty. He has quickly settled down in his new assignment, attending to problems of people with alacrity and ease.

Gupta hears the visitors, who come to his office with their grievances or seeking help, with attention and responds promptly, making sure they return satisfied. Quite a few of them are, in fact, not able to make out that he lacks eyesight. “I could not make out. He was patient and promised to resolve my problem related to delay in payment of old-age pension,” Dharma Singh of Kalayat told this reporter after meeting the deputy commissioner.

The only giveaway is the assistant who is always there and reads out the requests letters or documents to him and his software-aided laptop and mobile phones that he operates with the help of voice commands.