The speeches at the India International Centre on 9 October 2026 were about commitment. The two roundtables were about something harder: how you would know.
The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, held a consultation titled Sugamyata Ka Sankalp in New Delhi, in partnership with The Association of People with Disability (APD) and in collaboration with Ipsos. Ms Manmeet Kaur Nanda, IAS, Additional Secretary, gave it its headline: accessibility cannot be an afterthought, nor can it be left to a single department or agency, and it requires concerted effort across all ministries and levels of government in partnership with civil society.
Then the working sessions began. The first examined sectoral challenges in the implementation and use of accessibility data. The second explored approaches to measuring accessibility across sectors, and the essential features of a credible and practical measurement framework.
More than ten years after the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan was launched, and nearly ten years after Parliament passed a statute making accessibility enforceable, the Department convened the sector to work out how to measure the thing. That is not a criticism of the consultation. It is the most useful fact in the release, and it points at a specific legal history.
What was launched, and what was promised
The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan (Accessible India Campaign) was launched by the Prime Minister on 3 December 2015, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. DEPwD runs it. It has three verticals:
- Built environment — government buildings, schools, hospitals, workplaces, public spaces.
- Transport — railway stations, airports, bus terminals, public transport fleets.
- Information and communication technology — government websites, documents, public information.
The original targets were specific and dated. At least 50% of government buildings in the national capital and State capitals were to be made accessible. All international airports and all A1, A and B-category railway stations were to be fully accessible by July 2016. A quarter of government public transport was to be accessible by mid-2017. Government websites and public documents were to conform to ISO/IEC 40500:2012, the international standard based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.
Those targets were missed — by one to three years, on the government's own subsequent accounting — and the deadline for completing the campaign's work was reset to March 2020. Government updates have reported progress on the transport vertical, including 709 railway stations made fully accessible and 4,068 partially accessible, though the figures circulate from updates of differing vintage and are worth checking against the current departmental return before being quoted.
The scale this is set against is the 2011 Census count: 2.68 crore persons with disabilities, or 2.21% of a population of 121 crore — 1.5 crore men and 1.18 crore women, up from 2.19 crore in 2001, with part of the increase attributable to the inclusion of mental disabilities in the later count. Most working estimates consider the Census figure an undercount, which is itself a measurement problem of the kind the consultation was convened to discuss.
The statute that made it a right
A campaign sets targets. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 created duties.
The Act replaced the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 and expanded the recognised categories of disability from 7 to 21, with power in the Central Government to notify more. Entitlements turn on benchmark disability, defined as not less than 40% of a specified disability. Section 34 requires not less than 4% of vacancies in government establishments to be reserved for persons with benchmark disabilities. Section 32 requires government and government-aided institutions of higher education to reserve at least 5% of seats — a figure worth holding alongside the enrolment picture in a higher education system at 30% gross enrolment. Section 21 requires every private establishment with 20 or more employees to adopt an equal opportunity policy.
For accessibility specifically, two things matter. Section 40 empowers the Central Government, in consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, to prescribe standards of accessibility for the physical environment, transport and ICT. And Sections 44, 45, 46 and 89 supply the teeth: they make observance of those standards a condition, provide timelines for compliance, and prescribe consequences for non-compliance.
The standards themselves were framed as Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017, which adopted by reference a set of sectoral guidelines issued by various ministries.
The judgment that is the real backdrop
On 8 November 2024 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court decided Rajive Raturi v. Union of India. The holding is narrow, technical and consequential.
The Court examined clauses (a) to (p) of Rule 15(1) and found that most of the standards they adopted — the ministry guidelines — did not contain mandatory or non-negotiable prescriptions. They were, in the Court's characterisation, recommendatory guidelines operating under the garb of mandatory rules. Since Section 40 contemplates prescribed standards, and Sections 44 to 46 and 89 presuppose that those standards are enforceable with timelines and consequences, a rule that merely commended good practice could not carry the statutory scheme. The Court held those provisions ultra vires the parent Act and directed the Union to delineate mandatory rules, as required by Section 40, within three months, which would involve segregating the non-negotiable rules from the expansive guidelines already in Rule 15.
It also made an interim direction that is frequently omitted in summaries: progressive compliance with the standards listed in the existing Rule 15(1), and progress towards the targets of the Accessible India Campaign, must continue unabated in the meanwhile. The old guidelines were not struck out of operation; they were held insufficient as the statutory standard.
Three months from 8 November 2024 expired in February 2025.
What has happened since, and what has not
The mandatory standards have been drafted in pieces, sector by sector, and as of October 2026 they remain drafts.
A draft of non-negotiable rules for the products sector was circulated in 2025. Drafts followed for transport and mobility. For the built environment, DEPwD invited public feedback on draft revised rules amending the 2017 Rules in December 2025, published in January 2026 — a draft that practitioners have criticised for leaning on the National Building Code 2016 and for citing clause numbers without reproducing the provisions they refer to, which reintroduces exactly the by-reference problem the Court objected to. For ICT, a draft amendment was notified for comment in July 2026, proposing a conformance regime built on Accessibility Conformance Reports documenting the extent to which a product meets IS 17802, the Indian Standard for ICT accessibility, with full compliance required within two years of publication and a ninety-day window for government bodies to revise procurement processes.
So the position on the day of the consultation was this. The Supreme Court’s deadline had passed twenty months earlier. The standards existed as four sectoral drafts at different stages. Organisations were still complying, in practice, with the 2017 Rules the Court had found wanting.
Against that background, a departmental consultation on how to measure accessibility is not a soft event. It is the missing piece.
Why measurement and enforceability are the same problem
This is the part worth reasoning through, because it is where the policy question actually lies.
A standard that is advisory cannot be audited. There is nothing to find a building in breach of. That was the Court's objection, and the drafting exercise now under way is meant to answer it.
But converting guidance into a mandatory standard only solves half of it. Even a binding standard needs a way of establishing whether a given station, website or bus fleet meets it — and that is a measurement instrument, not a legal one. The ICT draft recognises this: an Accessibility Conformance Report is precisely a measurement artefact, a document recording conformance against a published Indian Standard. The built environment has no equivalent in force.
There is a deeper difficulty, and it is why counting features is the wrong instrument. Accessibility is a chain, not an attribute. A railway station with a ramp at the entrance, a lift that is locked after 8 p.m., and no tactile path to the platform is not two-thirds accessible. For a person who cannot use stairs, it is unusable. The journey either completes or it does not.
A feature count rises steadily as ramps and lifts are installed, and can look like progress while the number of journeys a disabled passenger can actually complete unaided does not move at all. The honest metric is completion of the whole chain — entrance to platform to train to destination — and it is a much harder thing to collect, because it requires auditing routes rather than inventorying assets. The consultation's framing, "a credible and practical measurement framework", concedes the tension in those two words: credible points at journey-level auditing, practical points at what State machinery can actually report.
Who was in the room, and why that is the substantive detail
The participant list is the most informative part of the release.
Alongside DEPwD and the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities — represented by Commissioner Shri S. Govindaraj — there were officials from the Ministries of Education, Road Transport and Highways, Information and Broadcasting, Health and Family Welfare, and Statistics and Programme Implementation, along with Prasar Bharati and the Airports Authority of India. State Commissioners for Persons with Disabilities attended, with representatives of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Shri Girish C. Hosur, Joint Secretary, presented the campaign's journey; Mr Subir Hari Singh, President of APD, and Mr Sukanto Aich, its CEO, spoke; the roundtables were moderated by Ms Tripti Sharma of Ipsos.
The presence of MoSPI is the one to notice. Accessibility data has to enter the national statistical system to be measured consistently — someone has to define the indicator, specify the collection, and run it to a schedule. That is the same institutional logic as tagging budget lines against development goals: a commitment becomes measurable only when it is attached to a reporting instrument that already exists.
The presence of the line ministries is the "whole-of-government" claim made concrete. Accessibility obligations fall on whoever owns the asset. DEPwD owns the campaign and owns no stations, no highways, no broadcasters and no schools. It can convene, draft standards and report; it cannot build a ramp. That division is why the Additional Secretary's framing — that progress in one sector depends on coordinated action across others — is a description of the Department's actual powers rather than a rhetorical flourish.
What was and was not announced
No new standard was notified. No new target was set. No deadline was declared. The next phase of the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan was deliberated, not launched.
What the consultation produced is a record that the Department and the sector agree the binding constraint is now evidence: reliable data to guide planning, monitor implementation and assess progress. For a reader, the thing to carry forward is the sequence — a campaign with targets in 2015, a statute with duties in 2016, rules that the Supreme Court found unenforceable in 2024, mandatory standards still in draft in 2026, and a measurement framework still being designed. Each step was necessary. None of them is yet sufficient. That is how a right becomes an obligation becomes a service, and it is slower than any single announcement suggests.
🔑 Revision block
- What: DEPwD's Sugamyata Ka Sankalp consultation, India International Centre, New Delhi, 9 October 2026, with APD and Ipsos; two roundtables on accessibility data and on a measurement framework.
- Campaign: Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan, launched 3 December 2015 (International Day of Persons with Disabilities); three verticals — built environment, transport, ICT.
- Original targets: 50% of government buildings in the national and State capitals; all international airports and A1, A and B-category railway stations by July 2016; 25% of government public transport by mid-2017; websites to ISO/IEC 40500:2012 (based on WCAG 2.0). Missed by one to three years; deadline reset to March 2020.
- Statute: RPwD Act, 2016 — disabilities expanded 7 → 21; benchmark disability = 40%; Section 34 ≥ 4% reservation in government vacancies; Section 32 ≥ 5% seats in government and aided higher education; Section 21 equal opportunity policy for private establishments with 20+ employees.
- Accessibility provisions: Section 40 empowers the Centre to prescribe accessibility standards in consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities; Sections 44, 45, 46 and 89 supply conditions, timelines and consequences.
- Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, 8 November 2024, three-judge bench: clauses (a) to (p) of Rule 15(1) of the RPwD Rules, 2017 largely lacked mandatory prescriptions and were held ultra vires; Union directed to frame mandatory rules under Section 40 within three months, segregating non-negotiable rules from guidelines; existing Rule 15(1) compliance and campaign targets to continue unabated meanwhile.
- Status: the three months expired in February 2025; mandatory standards exist as sectoral drafts — products, transport and mobility, built environment (December 2025), and ICT (July 2026, proposing Accessibility Conformance Reports against IS 17802).
- Census 2011: 2.68 crore persons with disabilities, 2.21% of the population; 1.5 crore men, 1.18 crore women; up from 2.19 crore in 2001.
- Exam hook: an advisory standard cannot be audited, and a mandatory standard without a measurement instrument cannot be verified. Accessibility is a chain — a station with a ramp and a locked lift is unusable, not partly usable.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan was launched on: (a) 2 October 2014 (b) 15 August 2016 (c) 3 December 2015 (d) 26 November 2017
→ (c) Launched on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, 3 December 2015, by the Prime Minister.
Q2. The three verticals of the Accessible India Campaign are: (a) Built environment, transport, and information and communication technology (b) Education, employment and health (c) Buildings, websites and pensions (d) Railways, airports and highways
→ (a) The campaign is organised around the built environment, transport systems and the ICT ecosystem.
Q3. Under the RPwD Act, 2016, "benchmark disability" means a disability of not less than: (a) 25% (b) 40% (c) 50% (d) 75%
→ (b) Entitlements such as reservation under Sections 32 and 34 turn on benchmark disability, set at 40% of a specified disability.
Q4. The number of specified disabilities recognised under the RPwD Act, 2016 is: (a) 7 (b) 14 (c) 19 (d) 21
→ (d) Expanded from 7 under the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, with power in the Central Government to notify more.
Q5. In Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court held that: (a) Most standards adopted by Rule 15(1) of the RPwD Rules, 2017 lacked mandatory prescriptions and were ultra vires the Act (b) The Accessible India Campaign targets were unconstitutional (c) Reservation for persons with disabilities must be raised to 5% in government jobs (d) Accessibility is a matter exclusively for the States
→ (a) The Court directed the Union to frame mandatory rules under Section 40 within three months, segregating non-negotiable rules from guidelines.
Q6. The section of the RPwD Act, 2016 that empowers the Central Government to prescribe standards of accessibility is: (a) Section 21 (b) Section 32 (c) Section 40 (d) Section 89
→ (c) Section 40, in consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. Sections 44, 45, 46 and 89 then provide conditions, timelines and consequences.
Q7. Government websites under the campaign were to conform to: (a) IS 17802 (b) ISO/IEC 40500:2012, based on WCAG 2.0 (c) The National Building Code 2016 (d) ISO 9001
→ (b) ISO/IEC 40500:2012 is the international standard based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. IS 17802 is the Indian Standard for ICT accessibility used in the later draft conformance regime.
Q8. As per Census 2011, persons with disabilities in India numbered approximately: (a) 1.2 crore, or 1% of the population (b) 5.4 crore, or 4.5% of the population (c) 3.9 crore, or 3.2% of the population (d) 2.68 crore, or 2.21% of the population
→ (d) 2.68 crore out of 121 crore, up from 2.19 crore in 2001. The figure is widely regarded as an undercount.
Q9. Which body must be consulted before accessibility standards are prescribed under Section 40? (a) The Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (b) The National Human Rights Commission (c) The Bureau of Indian Standards (d) The NITI Aayog
→ (a) Section 40 requires consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities.
Q10. Why is a feature count an unreliable measure of accessibility? (a) Features are expensive to install (b) The RPwD Act prohibits counting features (c) Accessibility is a chain, and one broken link makes the whole journey impossible (d) Features are the responsibility of the States, not the Centre
→ (c) A ramp at the entrance with a locked lift and no tactile path does not deliver a partly usable station; the journey either completes or it does not.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Disability law is tested more often than candidates expect, and almost always on four hooks.
The first is the numbers in the statute. Twenty-one disabilities, forty per cent benchmark, four per cent in government jobs, five per cent in higher education, twenty employees for the equal opportunity policy. These are clean, finite and easy to set questions on; a paper will swap the 4% and the 5% and see who notices which applies to jobs and which to seats.
The second is campaign versus statute. The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan is a scheme with targets launched in 2015; the RPwD Act is legislation creating duties passed in 2016. A statement that attributes the reservation to the campaign, or the accessibility targets to the Act, is a standard distractor. Keep the instruments separate.
The third is the section map. Section 40 prescribes standards; Sections 44 to 46 set conditions and timelines; Section 89 penalises. Rule 15 of the 2017 Rules is where the standards were put, and that is what the Supreme Court examined. Learning Section 40 and Rule 15 as a pair will answer most questions in this area.
The fourth is the case. Rajive Raturi is now the leading authority, and the examinable proposition is precise: delegated legislation cannot convert a mandatory statutory scheme into self-regulation by adopting advisory guidelines. That is a general principle of administrative law dressed in a disability-rights case, and it travels — the same reasoning applies wherever rules under an Act water down what the Act compels.
For a written answer, the argument that distinguishes a good script is the one about enforceability and evidence. Saying that accessibility is a right under the Act earns little. Explaining that the right needed mandatory standards, that the Court found the standards advisory, that the replacement standards are still in draft, and that even binding standards require a measurement instrument before compliance can be established — that demonstrates you understand how an entitlement turns into a service. Regulatory design of this kind recurs across the welfare state, as the recent move to put 56 allied health professions on a scannable national register shows: the register is the measurement instrument that makes the standard enforceable.
Preparing for CDS/OTA? On welfare questions, always separate the scheme from the statute from the standard — and ask what would count as proof of compliance. Build the base with our CDS/OTA study material and the polity section, follow the daily CDS current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by The Cavalier Faculty Desk — Polity & Social Justice, at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.