The judiciary must display more sensitivity and empathy towards persons with disabilities and discover ways within the bounds of the law to help them, Supreme Court judge Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud said on Saturday, emphasising that the disabled do not require pity but entitlement to be treated as equals.
“Institutional changes are necessary as well. In the context of the judiciary, sensitivity and empathy are of utmost importance. Judges would do well to remember that a person with a disability who may be before them is a person – first and foremost,” said the senior top court judge as he delivered the third Professor Shamnad Basheer Memorial Lecture.
Talking about judicial mindset, justice Chandrachud regretted that a Supreme Court bench led by him had to overrule in 2021 a previous judgment of the apex court, which upheld the denial of entry to the visually challenged into judicial service.
“Where the law contains provisions for persons with disabilities, they must be followed without exception. Where such enabling laws do not exist, judges would do well to do what they can within the bounds of the law, in recognition of the needs of the person before them,” appealed the senior judge, while speaking on the subject ‘Making Disability Rights Real: Addressing Accessibility & More’.
In a bid to make judicial processes and systems accessible to persons with disabilities, justice Chandrachud said that not only the Supreme Court judgments would be soon made available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), a judgment search portal accessible to disabled persons will also be made operational.
{{/usCountry}}In a bid to make judicial processes and systems accessible to persons with disabilities, justice Chandrachud said that not only the Supreme Court judgments would be soon made available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), a judgment search portal accessible to disabled persons will also be made operational.
{{/usCountry}}Justice Chandrachud also talked about a common legal practice of delegating decisions relating to the body and life of a disabled person to a guardian or conservatorship on an assumption that mental capacity is necessary to exercise legal capacity.
“The ability to hold rights and exercise them lies at the core of every individual. If this is the case, then arbitrary restrictions on the exercise of legal capacity deny persons with disabilities equal protection before the law. By doing so, the law deprives them of a whole host of rights, including civil, political, social, economic, sexual, and reproductive rights,” he said, adding the state should positively support persons with disabilities to exercise their rights to the fullest possible extent.
According to justice Chandrachud, it is incumbent on all institutions, governmental or private, and all individuals, to do their bit to ensure a more just world for persons with disabilities.
“Governmental or private entities must ensure that laws and policies are being complied with. This is of foremost importance. In our individual capacities, the least we can do is accord persons with disabilities the respect they deserve and treat them as equals,” he added.
Elaborating on the concept of “reasonable accommodation” for persons with disabilities, the judge underscored that the idea is not to provide special treatment to them but align with the fundamental precept that without it, the quest for dignity and equality for the disabled would be illusory.
“The able-bodied adult male must not be classified as the standard or the norm, with all other groups thought of as a deviation. The spirit of our Constitution accounts for the rich tapestry of human experiences. The one stand-out feature which animates our Constitution is that it accommodates every human condition and experience” highlighted justice Chandrachud.
He further pointed out it is imperative to create an inclusive and accessible environment for persons with disabilities for providing them meaningful opportunities to progress in their careers, and cited the 2016 Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act that mandates 5% reservation for the disabled in all government institutions of higher education as well as those receiving aid from the government, besides earmarking government posts for the disabled.
The lecture was organised in the memory of Basheer, a legal academic and an intellectual property rights expert who founded Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA), a trust which works on making legal education accessible for underprivileged students. Basheer was 43 when he passed away in a tragic road accident in 2019.