Court notice to Centre on use of ‘Divyangjan’ for differently-abled

A division bench comprising Justice MM Sundresh and Justice R Hemalatha directed the counsel appearing for the Social Justice department to get instructions and posted the plea for further hearing to September 30.

The petitioner M Karpagam, a law graduate, had submitted that the United Nations Committee’s observation on May 16 last year had sought for the measures taken to adopt the human rights model of disability in legislation, policies, and practices, including in relation to assessment criteria and the certification of disability and measures to abolish the use of derogatory terminology in legislation, such as “divyangjan” and “mental retardation” to refer to persons with disabilities, particularly in the Mental Health Care Act (2017).”

The United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has marked the word ‘Divyangjan’ as controversial and similar to derogatory terminologies such as “mentally ill”, the plea said.

The plea also quoted CRPD’s concluding observations which held “Legislation, public policies, and practices that discriminate against persons with disabilities in particular guardianship, institutionalisation, psychiatric treatment, and segregated community services based on disability, and negative perceptions, including ‘normal life’ as opposed to the lives of persons with disabilities, and derogatory terminology like ‘mentally ill’, or ‘divyangjan’, the latter which is still controversial.”

The plea also held that most people consider the terms divyang/divyangjan controversial as it takes away the reality from the lives of the differently-abled.