SCO Explains: Vikash Kumar v UPSC

Transcript

The recent judgment of the Supreme Court in Vikash Kumar v UPSC is a very important judgment, especially looking at issues of disability and equality and reasonable accommodation. And in the next few minutes, I’ll try and just cover some of the most important points of this judgment and what my views on it are.

This was a case where a person with writer’s cramp needed a scribe for writing the UPC examination. And he was unable to get this facility of a scribe, because he initially wasn’t able to get a disability certificate and he did not come under the definition of a person with benchmark disability.

And therefore this case ultimately went up to the Supreme Court. When the case went up to the Supreme Court,  the Court directed a medical examination of the petitioner and this examination found that he did indeed have writer’s cramp, but that this would not come within the definition of benchmark disability and the disability was assessed at only 6%.

Further, the legal issues arose because the government guidelines of 2018, which mandated how scribes could be provided for persons with disabilities only allowed for scribes for persons first of all with benchmark disabilities and even within those disabilities, only persons with blindness locomotor disability, or cerebral palsy. And for all other conditions, a person had to get special permission.

So now, with this background of facts, the Court then went into the decision making process. The first issue that the court, laid down is that, the Court went into, the provisions of the rights of persons with disabilities act 2016. This is a new legislation enacted in India, had replaced the old 1995 act. And in this legislation, there are two separate definitions of a person with disability.  There is a definition which is a broad definition of person with disability under section 2 (s) which is defined as a person with long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairment, which in interaction with barriers hinders his full and effective participation in society equally with others.

This borrows from the CRPD definition and is from the social model of disability and not a medical model, it gives a broad and open-ended definition of what a person with disability would be. Then there is another definition under section 2 (r) which refers to a person with benchmark disability.

And this benchmark disabilities only refers to a person with not less than 40% of a specified disability. Now, benchmark disability is limited to certain provisions of the legislation, which referred to reservation in public employment and a few other provisions of the law. So what the Court held importantly is that by limiting the access of a scribe to only a person who falls under 2 (r), which is a person with benchmark disability, it would violate the overall framework of the law. Because there are only a few limited sections of the legislation, which refer to section 2 (r) there was no requirement that even the provision of a scribe, which would facilitate access to writing and examination should be limited only to persons with benchmark disabilities. And this should be allowed to all persons with disabilities, whether or not his condition, which is a writer’s cramp would fall within the framework of benchmark disability or not.

And the Court therefore held that this person should be given the provision of a scribe. But more importantly though the real impact of the judgment is on the issue of equality for persons with disabilities at a larger level.

The Court refers to reasonable accommodation as a key component of equality and non-discrimination it highlights that reasonable accommodation is really the obligation of providing positive duties and obligations on the state and private parties to provide additional support to persons with disabilities to facilitate their full participation.

The Court reiterated that denial of reasonable accommodation would amount to discrimination and that these obligations of reasonable accommodations are not only there on the public sector, but on private sector as well. Finally, most importantly, the judgment makes the link between equality and dignity. The Court holds that equality means recognizing the equal worth of every individual, irrespective of their disability. And this would mean that the individual dignity of all has to be respected. The principle of reasonable accommodation is a means of recognizing the equal worth and dignity of all by removing the barriers of our full participation and therefore reasonable accommodation would be an integral component of equality.

On a side note, what the judgment also does is that it held that a previous decision of the Supreme Court, which was quite a problematic decision where the Supreme Court held that persons who had visual or hearing impairment would not be qualified to be judges and this was quite a criticised judgment.

In this case, the Court held that since in that decision, the two-judge Bench did not take into account the principle of reasonable accommodation. That judgment would not be a binding precedent. So with some of these, observations, I think, this judgment takes forward the debates on equality, especially the principles of reasonable accommodation, positive obligations and the link of equality and dignity.

[The audio clip was first published by the Oxford Human Rights Hub here.]