Govt proposes new law to protect differently abled

The government will soon bring a law to protect rights of differently abled persons with higher punishment for crimes committed against and five% reservation in government jobs. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 28, 2013, 23:36:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government will soon bring a law to protect rights of differently abled persons with higher punishment for crimes committed against and five% reservation in government jobs.

The newly created ministry of disability affairs has prepared draft Rights of Persons With Disabilities Bill in consultation with the states governments, which is being circulated for inter-ministerial consultations before the Cabinet takes it up for approval.

The proposed law once enacted would replace the present Persons with Disabilities (Equal Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, which many experts feel had failed to do justice with India’s increasing population of disabled people.

The existing law covers only seven types of disabilities leaving aside many such as mental illness, dyslexia and deafness. It is primarily based on the concept that disabled need charity of the society rather than making them cohesive part of the system.

Javed Abidi of Disabled Rights Group (DRG), who advocated for the new law, says the proposed draft provided for “rights based approach” as against “welfare based” legislation. “It is a good but not a perfect draft,” he said.

The new law, which government officials expect to be finalised soon, widens the definition of disability to include all types and for the first time makes private sector accountable to providing public services in disabled friendly manner. It also says that special training for disabled persons should be provided in specialised fields such as broadcasting and sports.

The draft also proposed to increase reservation for disabled from existing three percent to five percent considering that recent reports including that of World Bank said that population of disabled in India ranged from four to eight percent. Of that, one percent vacancies in the government would be reserved for people having vision problem, hearing or speech impairment, autism, cerebral palsy and mental illness.

Creation of National Fund for Disabilities under the proposed law and special courts for them are other new provisions being proposed.

In cases of crime committed against the disabled, a government official said, the bill talks of higher punishment then the one prescribed for same crimes in the Indian Penal Code. “It would send a strong message,” the official said.

To ensure that the provisions of the proposed law are enforced, the bill provides for creation of a national commission for disabled people and similar ones at the state levels. These commissions would have similar power as national commission for scheduled tribes and scheduled castes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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