Fwd: Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Amendment) Rules, 2022

[Vaishnavi Jayakumar (Inclusive India)]

FYI - today is last day for submission on RPwD Rules amendment.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Vaishnavi Jayakumar 
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2022 at 20:57
Subject: Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Amendment) Rules, 2022
To: <pand...@nic.in>

Dear Mr. Panda, 

DRAFT RULES' AMENDMENT
1. Short title and extent.-
    (1) These rules may be called the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Amendment) Rules, 2022. 
    (2) They shall come into force from the date of their publication in the Official Gazette.
2. In the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2017, in rule (15), in sub-rule (1), for clause (a), the following clause shall be substituted, namely:-
    “ (a) Standard for public buildings as specified in the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India – 2021, issued by the Government of India, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs vide letter no. 28012/09/2019-W3, dated the 27th December, 2021, as amended from time to time and made available on https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d4dedBt2cw-JEvy_qqSodQ9ENfOyNfef/view 
”.
[F. No. 38-05/2022-DD-III (Part -1)]
RAJESH YADAV, Jt. Secy.

1) As the remit of the 2021 Harmonised Guidelines is of universal accessibility and not restricted to buildings per se, I would suggest that the above amendment clause (a) instead should echo the first line of Section 15 (1) and read :

       (a) Standard for public buildings and physical environment as specified in the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India as revised from time to time by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of  India and published on accessibilitycode.gov.in .

Explanation for changes :  Providing the contents of the Harmonised Guidelines currently in force, as well-structured, hyperlinked html on a standalone official website with '.gov.in' extension will make these statutory requirements more discoverable, easier to look up the verified up to date accessibility code and cross reference the same instead of the current confusion of many documents with the same cover. (The gazette version referenced for example is 360 pages and published December 2021, whereas the more recent version on the CPWD website published in March 2022 is 474 pages.) The online resource could also provide the soft copy of the print version as ePub and PDF, high resolution images of the drawings, scope for Indian language versions of the code, and the interface for suggesting further changes and improvements. Removing the date from the Standard's name in the RPwD Rules will make further minor amendments of this sort redundant.

2) There are already changes that need to be made in the Harmonised Guidelines - bus shelter design lacks the boarding platform for low floor buses, non-slip floor parameters are not defined clearly, emergency provisions for crisis scenarios need to be expanded. Given that this should ideally be a living standard, I would propose that a committee be formed with suitable representation on the lines of BIS committees which will receive and review suggestions in a transparent manner and make changes to this evolving document on a 6 monthly basis to start off with.

3) A similar form of feedback is essential for the RPwD Act and Rules, many other amendments and corrections are pending - see http://bit.ly/rpwd-annot . Can this be addressed too, please?

Thanks,

Sincerely,

Vaishnavi Jayakumar