Why New Law?

In 2009, when the new Government was formed at the Centre in India, one of the main priorities of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) was to amend the Persons with Disability Act of 1995. The proposed amendments were put on the website of the Ministry to seek inputs. National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) and Disabled Rights Group (DRG) formed a Core Group to review the proposed amendments.

The following observations were made by the Core Group on the proposed amendments:

• Proposed Amendments are not aligned to UNCRPD.
• It does not reflect the paradigm shift envisaged in UNCRPD, as it does not view disability as a form of human diversity.
• It fails to endorse the social model of disability and is not written in the rights-based framework. The emphasis still remains that of ‘the medical model’ and of conceptualizing disability as a disorder.
• It does not acknowledge the barriers that persons with disability face every day and shies away from commitments to challenge these barriers.
• The key principles and tenets of UNCRPD, for example, effective participation, inclusion, legal capacity, individual autonomy, liberty of movement, political participation, and participation in decision making are inconsistently reflected in writing of the amendments. Legal Capacity surprisingly does even not find a mention in the proposed amendments.

The Core Group felt that given the paradigm shift in the thinking about the rights of persons with disability as outlined in UNCRPD, the changes are so substantive that it may be useful to write a new law rather than just amend the present one.

In order to take the debate further and to build a consensus on the issue, NCPEDP and DRG organised National Consultation in New Delhi, followed by four Zonal Consultations in the North (Delhi), South (Chennai), West (Mumbai) and North East (Guwahati). There has been an overwhelming response in favour of the new law. The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Mukul Wasnik, was recently quoted in The Hindu as saying, "The government is finalising a new law for the disabled that would replace the existing one."

NCPEDP and DRG are of the strong opinion that the new law should be drafted in a democratic and transparent manner. It should not be left to the bureaucrats to draft the law. The Core Group has therefore proactively started drafting the new law.

The draft chapters prepared by the Core Group have been put up in this Blog to invite feedback, reactions and suggestions from persons with disability, NGOs, private and the public sectors and all the other stakeholders who will be directly or indirectly impacted by the new law. Diversity and Equal Opportunity Centre (DEOC) has created this blog for NCPEDP and DRG.

It is our responsibility, to ensure that the new law is comprehensive. We request you to please take out time to read all the draft chapters very carefully and provide your comments and inputs.