Image used for representational purposes.
A day after the Union Government notified amendments to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, tightening the norms for getting a disability certificate, the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) on Wednesday denounced them and called for their withdrawal.
The rights body said the amendments “are regressive in nature and will only add to the already existing hurdles for genuine persons with disabilities to get certified, so essential for identification, accessing services and entitlements”. It said that its objections to the draft rules were ignored.
The Government made the draft amendments public in July this year seeking public suggestions for a month. It notified the final amendments in an Extraordinary Gazette published on October 22.
Puja Khedkar case
The amendments to the rules came in the wake of the row over Puja Khedkar, a dismissed IAS probationer accused of faking her disability certificate, among other transgressions.
The new rules will require people with disabilities to mandatorily submit proof of identity, a photo not older than six months, and an Aadhaar card. They further require only medical authorities to be considered competent to receive and process applications for disability certificates, also increasing the time taken to process each application from one to three months.
The amended rules also have a clause in Rule 18 that allows for an application to lapse or become “inactive” if the medical authority concerned is unable to decide on it for over two years – following which the applicant will have to re-apply or approach the authority to reactivate it.
Soon after the draft amendments were published, the NPRD, along with over five dozen disability rights bodies and activists, had raised objections to the new rules. “It is regrettable that none of the concerns expressed by various disability rights organisations and activists were considered,” NPRD general secretary V. Muralidharan said in a statement on Wednesday.
‘Flawed approach’
“The proposed amendments are based on the wrongful understanding that persons with disabilities alone are to be blamed for manipulation of the process. The number of fake certificates being issued is a very small percentage of the total number of disability certificates being issued, and similar flaws exist in almost all systems of documentation in India. Thus, the response of making the process more stringent and difficult is totally flawed,” he added.
Mr. Muralidharan said these amendments “will in no way be able to address the systemic problems exposed in the wake of the Puja Khedkar case”.
“The Khedkar case was a classic example of manipulation at various levels, responsibility for which has still not been fixed. The case is a reflection of the lack of accountability, honesty, transparency and due diligence at multiple levels, including at the highest, none of which these amendments seek to address,” his statement added.
Published – October 23, 2024 09:30 pm IST
