Handicapped persons and the law: India
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Car parking
Mar 26 2015
Abhinav Garg
Reserve parking for disabled: HC
The Delhi high court ordered civic agencies to reserve space for the disabled in every parking space across the city and punish errant contractors and attendants. A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said the agencies have till now only “paid lip service“ to several rules enacted to ensure access to the disabled and ordered them to “reserve parking spaces most suitable for persons with disability and in sufficient number after assessing the need.“
Indicating its seriousness, the HC directed the state gov ernment and its agencies to include a penalty clause in rules so that a parking attendant or contractor who doesn't reserve space for disabled is punished and the contract is cancelled immediately .
However, the court left it to the discretion of the three corporations, DDA, NDMC and the government to explore the number of reserved spaces to be kept for the disabled.
The HC, also explained what moved it to rule in favour of the rights of disabled: “Our own experience in Delhi shows that at several places though ramps have been provided to enable access to wheelchairs, they are there merely for namesake as the gradient is very steep. We want to draw the attention of all concerned agencies that they must standardize the gradient...We find the ramps to be inaccessible in certain places owing to the storm water drain on the sides of the roads which acts as a barrier between the road and the ramp leading to the pavement. All this comes in the way of optimum and intended use of our roads and pavements, with the same being congested, dusty , blocked, uneven and full of potholes, impeding movement.“
The court acted on a PIL by Vinod Kumar Bansal highlighting absence of parking space for the disabled and encroachment upon public land.Giving a series of directions, the HC directed traffic police to ensure within six months that auditory signals are installed at all traffic lights while other agencies were directed to ensure that all pavements are accessible to persons with disabilities.
Broadening the scope of its intervention the court also directed the Union home secretary and the Delhi chief secretary to inform it if a consultant, thinktank or expert can be roped in to suggest ways by which “Delhi can be turned into a world class city.“
The bench observed that the main reason for failure of governance was “continuance even today of schemes and policies of governance and administration, which were devised more than a century ago.“
“It is sad that despite expending huge funds and the best intention of the officials and employees, the city is not able to achieve the world class status which it aspires...We are sure that a competent consultant assigned the said task would be able to devise a structure for better governance of the city,“ the court said.
Dyslexic students
From the archives of The Times of India 2010
‘No calculator for dyslexic student’
SC Says CBSE Knows Best
Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN
New Delhi: A class XII dyslexic student’s plea seeking to use a calculator for the March 22 mathematics paper did not yield the desired result in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Pranjay’s plea did not find favour with a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices Deepak Verma and C K Prasad. Not only he, but another 830 similarly challenged students appearing for their class X and XII boards will have to do without calculators.
In contrast, dyslexic students appearing in the ICSE class X and XII board would have the benefit of a calculator during the mathematics papers.
But, they need not despair or feel disadvantaged. For, CBSE counsel, senior advocate Bhaskar Gupta, told the Bench that the challenged students have been given four distinct concessions which should equip them to compete virtually on par with normal students.
The concessions are:
They can take a scribe with them to write the papers, though the person writing the papers would have to be studying in a class less than his They will be given an additional 60 minutes time for each paper The calculations need not be mandatorily worked out by the dyslexic student. Meaning thereby that the scribe can do it for him as the challenged student only tells him the process of working it out
All such students will be accommodated on the ground floor Appearing for Pranjay, who did well in his class X board under ICSE by scoring 92 in mathematics with the help of a calculator, senior advocate J L Gupta said there was a national policy for physically challenged which categorically says dyslexic students be allowed to use calculators in examinations.
The CBSE counsel said the national policy was of 2006 whereas the secondary board in 2009 had with the help of experts taken a decision to grant these four concessions to challenged students while categoricaly declining the aid of a calculator. This 2009 decision had never been challenged by any student.
But the Bench being satisfied with CBSE’s response declined to grant the benefit of use of calculator to Pranjay. “Once the CBSE thinks the permission to take help of a scribe and additional time of 60 minutes should offset the disadvantageous position of a dyslexic student, we cannot grant the benefit of use of calculator to a single student,” the Bench said refusing any interim relief.
Reservation in promotion
The Times of India Feb 28 2015
Dhananjay Mahapatra
`Disabled should get reservation in promotion'
The SC said the government could not deny quota in promotion to those appointed to a post under the reservation policy for the physically handicapped. A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and A K Sikri rejected the Union government's plea to set aside a HC decision ordering that those appointed in government service through physically handicapped quota would also be entitled to reservation while getting promoted.
Arguing for the Centre, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said there were four categories of civil services and if a person had availed the reservation benefit in getting a job, it would be unfair to extend the reservation benefit again to him while considering him for promotion to the higher category of service.The bench was not convinced. It said, “Why confine the reservation benefit only to the entry level and not for promotion. If a person is disabled, he is always disabled. So, as long as the disability continues, he should get reservation benefits.“
Disabled students in higher education
The Times of India Apr 06 2015
Only 0.6% of disabled students in higher edu
About 0.56% seats in higher education go to disabled candidates though there's reservation to the extent of 3% in public institutions. Of this 74.08% are male and 22.70% female. This came out in the third survey on the Status of Disability in Higher Education conducted by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment of Disabled People .
It includes responses from over 150 institutions of higher education across the country including 16 Indian Institutes of Technology and 13 Indian Institutes of Management, architecture, law, medicine, hotel management and other engineering and business schools.
The participation rate varies across disabilities. Of the total number of disabled candidates, 46.67% have ortho paedic disabilities, 32.13% are visually impaired, 5.16% are speechhearing impaired and 16.05% have other types. The percentage of students varies across streams as well the IIMs, surprisingly, come closest to completing the 3% quota with 2.49% disabled students of the total enrolled. Social work schools have an enrollment of 1.75% and IITs, 1.47%. The general universities are at the bottom with a 0.31% fill-rate. The total number of the students considered is 15,21,438.
Bipin Tiwari of Delhi University's Equal Opportunity Cell explains why it's difficult for universities even proactive ones to fill the quota.“There is a clear disconnect between schools and colleges.I don't know how many disabled children graduate from school every year. We try to spread awareness and enrollment is increasing. There are about 1,300 disabled students enrolled in DU right now,“ Tiwari said.
Of the 1,500-odd seats, about 700 are filled. The gender ratio is far healthier than the national average the survey furnishes about 60-40. The largest category in DU is not that of the orthopaedically-disabled but of the visually-impaired and the percentage of the hearing speech-impaired is far lower.
He explains that most students in this group come from special schools and prefer computer-based courses.“They are often advised at the special schools to take up vocational courses.“
Particular categories of the disabled tend to go for specific streams. For instance, 99% of the disabled in medicine are orthopaedicallly disabled; 57% of the disabled students in general science are blind and 62% in hotel management are in the other disability category (including learningmental disability).
The survey also found that over a 100 of the respondent institutions have a “disability unit“ on campus and over 130 have a “disability policy.“
