Plea alleges exclusion of PwDs from consultation

MADURAI: December 3 Movement, a disabled persons rights organisation, has filed an impleading petition at the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court alleging that the differently-abled community has been excluded from public consultation on draft National Educational Policy (NEP) 2019.

President of the movement TMN Deepaknathan filed the petition seeking direction to be added as party in public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Madurai-based advocate Bhagavat Singh for translation of draft NEP into regional languages including Tamil for effective public consultation. 

According to Deepaknathan, none of the organisations, groups, collectives, platforms which work for the rights of disabled persons have been consulted for framing the NEP. He further submitted that though the policy document was released in ‘text to speech format’, the document is accessible only to visually impaired who know English and are technologically literate, thereby violating Section 40 and 42 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016.

Hearing the submissions, the bench impleaded the Chief Commissioner of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) department of the Centre and Commissioner of the Department for the Welfare of Differently abled of Tamil Nadu, Secretaries of State Higher Education and School Education in the case and issued notice to them.

The judges further recorded the submissions of the Central government counsel that the consultation process for the draft NEP is still going on and that the same would be placed before both houses of the parliament for discussion before being finalised and adjourned both the PIL and the impleading petition to September 19 for further hearing.