The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : DGCA draft policy violates the rights of disabled persons

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 27, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

DGCA draft policy violates the rights of disabled persons

Sahana Charan

The draft policy was issued on July 27
Time for sending suggestions ended on August 15

Bangalore: A few months ago, a private airline refused Tamil actor Prithviraj’s 11-year-old autistic son, who was accompanied by his parents, to travel by air from Bangalore to Chennai, stating that the boy’s behaviour was “abnormal.”

This is not an isolated incident where persons with disabilities have been refused their right to travel by air by domestic carriers citing ambiguous rules and regulations.

Now the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) seems all set to legitimise this kind of discrimination by airlines and airport staff through their Draft Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) Section 3 Series ‘M’ Part 1 – Carriage of Physically Challenged Passengers by Air. The draft policy, which is put up on the DGCA website ( www.dgca.nic.in), has come under flak from persons with disabilities and those working for their welfare for being insensitive to the needs of disabled persons and not acknowledging their right to travel by air independently without discrimination.

“Even though the DGCA had put up the draft policy on the website and called for responses which could be incorporated in the final policy, no steps were taken to make the draft public. The draft was issued on July 27 and the last date for sending suggestions was August 15. Most persons were not even aware that such an draft policy was put up calling for suggestions,” Mahesh Chandrasekhar, Advocacy Co-ordinator at CBR Forum, who is a wheelchair user, told The Hindu.

Mr. Chandrasekhar added that the draft uses objectionable language such as “obvious abnormal physical or mental conditions observed and reported by airline personnel or industry-associated persons.”

“How can they use words such as abnormal?” he asks.

According to L. Suryanarayan, a visually impaired person who was prevented from travelling by air by a private airline a few years ago, said that the policy instead of being friendly to disabled persons can actually be used by an airline to refuse to take persons with disabilities on board. One of the sections in the draft says that persons with severe mobility, hearing or vision impairment should travel with assistance of an escort. “This means that if a disabled person wants to travel independently the airline can disallow him to get on the aircraft,” he said.

Ishrath Afza, State Assistant Commissioner for Disabilities, said that the policy goes against the spirit of the existing law and hampers the rights of persons with disabilities to travel independently.

There is ambiguity in the use of terminology — a physically challenged person has been defined as a person with physical or mental disability or incapacitation or with a medical condition which requires individual attention or assistance and this is in conflict with the definition given in the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, Mr. Chandrasekhar added.

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