Education Bill draft excludes differently-abled,say critics

“In the earlier draft,the word ‘disability’ was defined but the Bill I am seeing now has no mention of the disabled,” Javed Abidi,former member of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE),said. “The clause relating to education for the disabled has been taken out.”

Abidi alleged that during the tenure of former Union Minister of Human Resource Development Arjun Singh,who had worked on the Bill,there was a separate clause on education for the differently-abled.

“The question is what went wrong. Everything we had worked for all these years is nowhere,” Abidi said.

Maithu Alur,a member of CABE,said,“During the recent Lok Sabha elections,four major political parties had included ‘disability’ in their political manifestoes. Despite all effort,one of the first Bills being tabled in Lok Sabha has excluded children with disabilities.”

The Bill can,however,be corrected if the phrase ‘children with disabilities’ is included in Chapter 1,Clause 2 (d) of the Bill,she added.

Other “disadvantaged” groups have been clearly defined. “We want disability to be clearly defined in the new Bill,” Abidi said. “We will withdraw our agitation only when three of our demands are met.”

The three demands are that the word ‘disability’ be included clearly under the section for disadvantaged children in the Bill,that special schools be mentioned under the definition of schools and other infrastructure,and the National Trust Act of 1999 be added,apart from the Disability Act,1995.

The National Trust Act covers autism,cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities.