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Another high for disabled
The cabinet today also approved amendment to the Copyright Act, 1957, to facilitate easy availability of copyrighted material for the physically challenged who need access to copyright material in specialised formats like Braille text, talking text for the visually challenged and sign language for the aurally challenged. Currently, the cost of production of material in such formats is very high.
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New Delhi, December 24
Four months after it was enacted, the ambitious Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009, which guarantees free and compulsory education to children between six and 14 years, is ready for an amendment to address the concerns of differently-abled students and minorities.
When passed by Parliament in August, the RTE Act did not include the disabled in the definition of the disadvantaged groups. Nor did it specify the obligations of Central and state governments towards children suffering from autism, cerebral palsy and mental retardation.
These wrongs will now be corrected, with the Union cabinet today approving changes to the law to incorporate the aspirations of disabled students, besides exempting the school committees of aided minority institutions from performing a managing role. The latter will only perform an “advisory” role after the amendment -- in line with the special right to self govern which they enjoy under the Constitution.
The major amendment, however, pertains to enhancing the definition of “disadvantaged” sections to include the disabled students. In the old draft, SCs/STs/OBCs were mentioned as disadvantaged. Neglect of the disabled in the law led to a mass agitation by disability rights activists who accused HRD Minister Kapil Sibal of diluting the draft to exclude the disabled.
The cabinet today allowed amendments to the Act to -- include children with disabilities within the meaning of children belonging to disadvantaged groups and providing that children with disabilities as defined in the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 1999, shall have special rights to pursue free and compulsory elementary education.
The third amendment gives minorities an exemption of sorts from setting up school management committees, in which parents and teachers are to be made members.
Also, HRD ministry has set up a committee under Muthu Aloor, the activist who participated in the earlier agitation, to map the population of differently-abled students in the country.
