New law seeks right based approach for disabled

A new draft law for disabled suggests reservation for them in legislative bodies, up to seven percent reservation in government jobs and a right based approach for different groups but still falls short of expectations.

Updated on: Jul 12, 2011, 22:41:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new draft law for disabled suggests reservation for them in legislative bodies, up to seven percent reservation in government jobs and a right based approach for different groups but still falls short of expectations.

The committee constituted to frame the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities, 2011, has also told the government that a new ministry to look into issue of disabled should be set up and all ministries should have a cell for disabled people. It also wants some reservation in elected bodies for disabled so that they can be heard.

"It is a progressive step but full of shortcomings," said Javed Abidi of Disabled Rights Group, an NGO that campaigns for rights of disabled people. "They want special schools for disabled to be continued instead of mainstreaming their education with other children. It may be because some of the members of the committee run special school for disabled".

In a major change proposed, the committee wants that there should be one percent reservation in jobs for seven different categories of disabled people, meaning that an increased from three to seven percent.

But, in 15 years of existing law the government has not been able to provide more than one percent of total jobs to the people suffering from different disabilities.

For the first time the law provides for right based approach covering education, health, social security and specific needs of women and children.

The draft law prescribes disabled women's right to home, family, justice and disabled children right to health, sports, leisure and government facilities. It also wants the government to ensure right to life and living, basic minimum facilities and guardianship.

A new controversial provision has also been added which says the disabled people will have a right to protect their fertility. "No person with disability should be subjected to medical procedure which leads to infertility without consent," the draft law says.

The new draft also seeks to set up a district level authority to look into complaints of disabled people against violation of the law and act as a monitoring body for its implementation.

The bill also seeks to make changes in different central government laws to make them sensitive to specific needs of disabled people.

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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