National Human Rights Commission Chairperson Justice Arun Mishra has said the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD) needs to be defined properly as it is culminating in the proportionate opportunity, which is restrictive in nature.

Intervening in the 3rd Roundtable on Implementation of CRPD as part of 16th Session of the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (COSP16) being organized at the UN headquarters in New York, USA from June 13 to 15, Justice Mishra, who is accompanied by NHRC Member Rajiv Jain, said opportunities for employment should not be denied by prescription of kind of disabilities; full opportunity should be afforded to ensure need-based distributive justice.

The NHRC Chairperson said discrimination in adoption must come to an end. Physical, mental, and emotional stability needs required to be defined. He also said the concept of severe disability should be properly defined along with circumstances to take the consent of guardians etc for surgery to avoid its misuse.

Giving a brief inside into the legal provisions in India for the protection of the Rights of disabled people, Justice Mishra said that the standards for accessibility have been defined in India’s The Rights of Persons with Disabilities, RPWD Act, 2016. Now the challenge is to create awareness. Disabled are called specially abled to provide them dignity and improve their mindset. Preparation of education and other material for the primary to secondary level education in sign language, audio-visual mode, print, and electronic media is being focused upon.

He also said that separate National level institutes have been set up for visual, speech and hearing, intellectual, multiple disabilities, locomotor disabilities, rehabilitation and training, mental health, and retardation. They are providing specialized postgraduate degree courses, and diplomas, imparting vocational training, clinical services, running indoor hospitals, and providing OPD services. Regional centres are functional.

Referring to some of the recent initiatives of the NHRC, India for the protection of the rights of disabled persons, he drew attention to an Advisory issued by it in relation to the prevention of visual impairment of children by toys, crackers, and chemicals. He also said that in the Draft National Action Plan 2022, the Commission has recommended for special treatment for women to inch towards the much-desired gender justice.

The Accessible India campaign is in vogue for digital help literacy. Besides, the National Skill Development Corporation and regional centres for the development of skills of disabled people have been established. Infrastructure needs are being looked into to make them broad-based in pursuance of the enabling provisions of the Act besides ensuring the audit of buildings for access including in prisons, beggar homes, and mental hospitals.

The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought responses from the Centre and the Delhi Government, among others, on a plea seeking repair, operation and maintenance of elevators and escalators across foot-over bridges and public buildings in the capital.

The Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla, while issuing notice in the petition filed by a practising Advocate, directed the respondents to file their respective status reports in the matter.

The matter is slated for hearing on September 6, 2022.

Advocate Pankaj Mehta, Managing Partner of Fortune Legal Advocates and Legal Consultants, who is the petitioner-in-person, has knocked the doors of the Delhi High Court highlighting the inaction of the government in maintaining public accessibility installations such as escalators and elevators in foot-over bridges and other public structures across the capital meant for persons with disabilities and elderly people, leading to eventual decay and non-functionality of such installations over a period of time.

The plea alleged that such lackadaisical approach of the authorities concerned is depriving the physically disabled and senior citizens of their basic human right to access public buildings and structures.

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In this regard, the plea referred to United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities, 2006, to which India is a signatory, which mandates the member nations to take all necessary measures to ensure effective enjoyment of right to life by person with disabilities on an equal basis with others.

“The UNCRPD and its subsequent ratification by the Indian government by the enactment of the Right of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 should have seen a paradigm shift in the legislative measures to protect and empower the rights of the disabled citizens from a ‘charity’ based approach to a ‘right’ based approach. However, the actions of the Respondents completely nullified and obstructed the achievement of the object and purposes of the said Act as the infrastructure developed and implemented so far in pursuance of said Act is nothing but a hollow measure as it fails on the very rudimentary promise it intends to deliver: accessibility to those who are disabled”

-the plea averred.

It is pointed out in the petition that several representations have been made by Mehta highlighting the undue hardship being caused to people with disabilities as well as by the senior citizens by non-functional and skeletal state of such accessibility installations, however no substantial action has been taken on the same.

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During the course of hearing, Mehta submitted that a considerable amounts of taxpayer money had been spent on the construction of foot-over bridges across Delhi as well as on the installation of elevators and escalators therein; however, almost all such installations are in a deplorable state since past several years, causing grave hardship to people with disabilities and to those who are frail on account of old age.

He argued that this callous approach of the government has left persons with disabilities and the senior citizens of the nation effectively unable to access such basic public infrastructure, which is prima facie violation of Articles 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution.