Supreme Court: Stating that educational institutions are bound to reserve seats from persons suffering from disability, the bench of Dr. AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, JJ directed that all those institutions which are covered by the obligations provided under Section 32 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 shall comply with the provisions of Section 32 while making admission of students in educational courses of higher education each year.
The other directions given by the Court in this regard are:
- Insofar as law colleges are concerned, intimation in this behalf shall be sent by those institutions to the Bar Council of India (BCI) as well. Other educational institutions will notify the compliance, each year, to the UGC. It will be within the discretion of the BCI and/or UGC to carry out inspections of such educational institutions to verify as to whether the provisions are complied with or not.
- UGC should constitute a committee consisting of persons from amongst Central Advisory Board, State Advisory Boards, Chief Commissioner of State Commissioners appointed under the Disabilities Act. The said committee will prepare a detailed study for making provisions in respect of accessibility as well as pedagogy and would also suggest the modalities for implementing those suggestions, their funding and monitoring, etc by June 2018.
- The aforementioned committee will also consider feasibility of constituting an in-house body in each educational institution (of teachers, staff, students and parents) for taking care of day to day needs of differently abled persons as well as for implementation of the Schemes that would be devised by the Expert Committee.
It is important to note that the petition was filed only in respect of law colleges but considering the fact that these issues are of seminal importance, the Court decided to extend the coverage by encompassing all educational institutions. Stressing upon the importance of the issue, the Court said:
“a basic underline assumption, which is well recognised, is that everyone can learn; there is no such person as one who is ineducable; and that, accordingly, all disabled persons (from whatever disability they are suffering) have right to get not only minimum education but higher education as well. Not making adequate provisions to facilitate proper education to such persons, therefore, would amount to discrimination.”
The Court, hence, directed that the Report of the committee, as well as the Action Taken Report, shall be submitted before it in July 2018. [Disabled Rights Group v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 1486, decided on 15.12.2017]
