The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought responses from the Centre and the Delhi Government, among others, on a plea seeking repair, operation and maintenance of elevators and escalators across foot-over bridges and public buildings in the capital.
The Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla, while issuing notice in the petition filed by a practising Advocate, directed the respondents to file their respective status reports in the matter.
The matter is slated for hearing on September 6, 2022.
Advocate Pankaj Mehta, Managing Partner of Fortune Legal Advocates and Legal Consultants, who is the petitioner-in-person, has knocked the doors of the Delhi High Court highlighting the inaction of the government in maintaining public accessibility installations such as escalators and elevators in foot-over bridges and other public structures across the capital meant for persons with disabilities and elderly people, leading to eventual decay and non-functionality of such installations over a period of time.
The plea alleged that such lackadaisical approach of the authorities concerned is depriving the physically disabled and senior citizens of their basic human right to access public buildings and structures.
Also Read: Delhi High Court seeks response from CBI on expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s bail plea
In this regard, the plea referred to United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities, 2006, to which India is a signatory, which mandates the member nations to take all necessary measures to ensure effective enjoyment of right to life by person with disabilities on an equal basis with others.
“The UNCRPD and its subsequent ratification by the Indian government by the enactment of the Right of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 should have seen a paradigm shift in the legislative measures to protect and empower the rights of the disabled citizens from a ‘charity’ based approach to a ‘right’ based approach. However, the actions of the Respondents completely nullified and obstructed the achievement of the object and purposes of the said Act as the infrastructure developed and implemented so far in pursuance of said Act is nothing but a hollow measure as it fails on the very rudimentary promise it intends to deliver: accessibility to those who are disabled”
-the plea averred.
It is pointed out in the petition that several representations have been made by Mehta highlighting the undue hardship being caused to people with disabilities as well as by the senior citizens by non-functional and skeletal state of such accessibility installations, however no substantial action has been taken on the same.
Also Read: Chirag Paswan eviction: Delhi HC refuses to interfere with Centre’s decision
During the course of hearing, Mehta submitted that a considerable amounts of taxpayer money had been spent on the construction of foot-over bridges across Delhi as well as on the installation of elevators and escalators therein; however, almost all such installations are in a deplorable state since past several years, causing grave hardship to people with disabilities and to those who are frail on account of old age.
He argued that this callous approach of the government has left persons with disabilities and the senior citizens of the nation effectively unable to access such basic public infrastructure, which is prima facie violation of Articles 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution.