A decade since landmark law, disability rights and justice are stuck in a loop

A decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act was passed, its vision of empowering people with disabilities and removing barriers to accessing justice is unfulfilled.

This failure is most evident in the functioning of the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and its state counterparts, even though they were strengthened as part of the 2016 law to ensure substantive rights and meaningful access to justice for disabled persons.

The 2016 act envisaged a government-wide effort, requiring ministries, departments and public institutions to review and align their laws, policies, procedures and practices with its mandate.

In the absence of these reforms, persons with disabilities have been forced to assert their rights one legal case at a time. Contradictions in employment, education, accessibility, and public services quickly surfaced, with many disputes reaching the courts and generating a growing body of disability jurisprudence.

However, litigation was meant to be the exception, not the primary mechanism for securing rights guaranteed by law.

Here, the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and its state counterparts were supposed to address such concerns brought before them and order corrective measures. But rather than envisioning a robust quasi-judicial body capable of enforcing disability rights, Parliament replicated the model of the National Human Rights...

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