Members of Nalsar Hyderabad’s Centre for Disability Studies have marked up the leaked draft of the Cabinet’s watered-down Disability Rights Bill 2013, explaining in detail some of the sections that they feel makes “mincemeat” of the rights of disabled persons, as argued in a column on Legally India yesterday.

The bill was prepared by the Cabinet and leaked in late January 2014 to disability rights activists, some of whom have condemned the changes made from an earlier draft put together by a committee in 2011, and a later draft by the Ministry of Social Justice, which diluted some of the reforms in 2012.

The latest draft, Nalsar argued yesterday, is not in conformity with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, which India has ratified in 2007 without reservations.

Legally India has asked Nalsar’s Centre for Disability Studies to annotate the most egregious examples in the proposed Bill, which has been tabled by the Government to get passed in a whirlwhind parliamentary session before the upcoming elections.

[Read annotations to bill in separate window]

Photo by JD Hancock