Press Release
BGFI Suggests to New Disability Law Committee
Blind Graduates Forum of India, a non-government organization working for all
round development of the visually challenged, in its efforts for providing a
voice to Visually challenged and other disabled in law and policy formation and
implementation, has come up with a broad range of suggestions for the
government committee drafting the new law to replace the existing persons with
Disabilities act, 1995.
The meeting to illicit suggestions and comments of persons with Disabilities on
the reports prepared by said committee was convened on Sunday, 10/10/10, at the
PGTD Law, Nagpur. Around thirty participants cutting across various
disabilities came forth with their observations.
Dr. Rajat Agrawal, a well-known eye specialist working in California US and
hailing from the city, interacted with the participants in the beginning,
giving details of his evolving path-breaking research about Bionic eye which
has the potential of making persons with retinal problems see again. Answering
participants' queries, He also gave his valuable inputs towards formulating a
useful definition of blindness and low vision. Nagpur may soon have a local
chapter of Retina India, network founded by him to inculcate awareness and
advocacy for retinal patients nationwide.
Dr. Shirish Deshpande, HoD, PGTD Law RTMNU, and Mr. Rajesh Asudani, Vice
president BGFI, acquainted all participants with ongoing work of the drafting
committee making new disability law and its updated reports. Each participant
then spoke about her/his comments on it and the issues they felt the new law
must address. The discussion was properly channelized by Dr. Vinod Asudani,
Hon. National secretary of the forum.
Some of the important suggestions which were finalized to be recommended to the
Govt. committee include:
* Set up Disability Disputes Redressal fora for deciding disability
rights cases, at district, state and national level;
* Make provision for enforcement decree for judgments of such fora;
* Divest CCPD and SCDs of disputes deciding powers;
* Make the recognition of educational institutions contingent on their
following disability specific measures;
* Make all private players receiving any sort of aid from Govt. follow
disability reservation
* Ensure that at least the private players who provide public utility
services earlier provided by Govt. follow disability law provisions including
reservation of jobs;
* Make presence of at least 30% disabled persons mandatory on executive
committees of disability NGOs;
* Define disability to include medical parameters and index of
activities of daily life, rather than in purely medical terms;
* Clearly lay down modalities of reservation for the disabled, like
treatment of horizontality and merit based selection, etc.;
* Clearly stipulate details about human assistance during exams like
scribe to visually challenged;
* Accord full faith and credit clause of constitution to disability
certificates and make them basis for availing all and every facility relating
to disability;
Delink reasonable accommodation in employment from reservation of posts;
* Provide for mandatory disability audit of all the govt. schemes;
* Provide for enhanced punishment to offences against women with
disabilities;
* Include Disabled explicitly in the definition of priority sector
lending for banks;
* Make non-observance of the provisions of disability act a civil
liability and ground for specific relief and financial penalties clearly linked
to violation and with a view to provide for them;
* Make right to life meaningful by making it obligatory for government
to bear cost of all corrective measures like cochlear implants, prosthetics,
corneal transplants,, etc. and making corneal donation compulsory at least in
government hospitals;
* Give clear mandate to government to provide all and every reasonable
accommodation to disabled in education and employment including assistive
technology;
* Provide for personal pecuniary liability in cases of willful default.
These and many other points were enthusiastically deliberated upon and
participants noted that the drafting committee reports do not contain clear cut
provisions about many of these matters. It was decided that a memorandum would
be shortly forwarded to the law drafting committee. Dr. Deshpande ably guided
the deliberations and Mr. Lakshman Khapekar, Mr. Prakash Andhare, Adv. Vandana
Navghare, Adv. Nandita Dube and others were prominently present.
(Dr. Vinod Asudani)
Hon. Secretary
Blind Graduates Forum of India
October 11, 2010
"I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair;
But to make bad matters worse
I found God wasn't there."
--Robert Frost
(Rajesh Asudani)
Assistant General Manager
Reserve Bank of India
Nagpur
Cell: 9420397185
o: +91 712 2806832
R: 2591349
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