Landmark Cases — Vikash Kumar v UPSC, Rajive Raturi

No two decisions have shaped the working life of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 more than Vikash Kumar v Union Public Service Commission and Rajive Raturi v Union of India. The first rescued the individual aspirant from a rigid threshold of "benchmark" disability and planted reasonable accommodation at the heart of Indian equality law; the second converted accessibility from an aspirational campaign into a non-negotiable, judicially enforced standard. Read together with Jeeja Ghosh, Avni Prakash and the 2025 Pragya Prasun digital-KYC ruling, they trace the Supreme Court's decisive shift from the medical to the social model of disability. This chapter maps that jurisprudence the way a judiciary or CLAT-PG examiner expects you to deploy it.

The statutory backdrop: from benchmark to dignity

The 2016 Act repealed the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 and gave domestic effect to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which India ratified in 2007. Its architecture distinguishes two cohorts. A "person with disability" under Section 2(s) is anyone with a long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment which, in interaction with barriers, hinders full and effective participation in society. A narrower "person with benchmark disability" under Section 2(r) is one certified as having not less than forty per cent of a specified disability, and is the gateway to the reservation and quota chapters (Chapters VI and X).

This bifurcation is the fault-line on which most litigation turns. Three definitions do the heavy lifting in the case law: discrimination on the ground of disability (Section 2(h)), reasonable accommodation (Section 2(y)) and the denial of reasonable accommodation as a form of discrimination. Section 3, the equality and non-discrimination guarantee, ties these together and is the doctrinal hinge of Vikash Kumar. For the textual scheme, see our chapters on definitions and the right to equality and non-discrimination.

Reasonable accommodation: the organising idea

Section 2(y) defines reasonable accommodation as "necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments, without imposing a disproportionate or undue burden in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise of rights equally with others." The phrase is borrowed from Article 2 of the UNCRPD. Its genius lies in its individualised character: it asks not whether a person fits a category, but what specific adjustment that person needs to compete on equal terms. A scribe in an examination hall, an extra hour of compensatory time, an accessible boarding ramp, a screen-reader-compatible KYC interface, each is a reasonable accommodation.

Crucially, the Act treats the denial of reasonable accommodation as discrimination. This is what allows the courts to convert a soft entitlement into a hard, enforceable right. The conceptual move, drawn from comparative jurisprudence and the social model, is that disability is produced by the interaction between impairment and an unaccommodating environment, not by the impairment alone. Strip away the barrier and the disability, in the legal sense, recedes. Vikash Kumar made this the ratio of Indian disability law.

Vikash Kumar v UPSC: the facts

Vikash Kumar v Union Public Service Commission, decided on 11 February 2021 and reported at (2021) 5 SCC 370 (Civil Appeal No. 273 of 2021), arose from the Civil Services Examination. The appellant suffered from writer's cramp (a form of dysgraphia), which made sustained handwriting impossible. He sought permission to use a scribe. The UPSC refused, relying on its 2018 guidelines, which the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities had framed: a scribe was available only to candidates with a benchmark disability, and writer's cramp was neither a notified benchmark disability nor certified at the forty per cent threshold.

The Central Administrative Tribunal and the Delhi High Court both rejected his claim. The case reached a Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud (with Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna JJ.). The narrow question, whether a man with writer's cramp may have a scribe, opened onto the largest question in the statute: is benchmark disability a precondition for reasonable accommodation?

Vikash Kumar: the holding

The Court held, emphatically, that benchmark disability is not a precondition to obtaining a scribe. It read the statutory scheme structurally: the forty-per-cent threshold of Section 2(r) is relevant only where the Act expressly invokes "benchmark" disability, principally the reservation chapters. Section 3, the equality guarantee, speaks of "persons with disabilities" simpliciter, the broader Section 2(s) cohort, and is, in the Court's words, "an affirmative declaration" of the right to equality unconstrained by any benchmark notion. To import the benchmark threshold into the scribe entitlement was to read a limitation into the Act that Parliament had not enacted.

Justice Chandrachud emphasised that the 2018 guidelines could not be read as exhaustive of the situations in which a scribe might be allowed; they had to yield to the parent Act and to the constitutional guarantee of equality under Article 14. The Court directed the UPSC and the Government to revisit the guidelines so that candidates with disabilities outside the benchmark category could access scribes and other facilitations. It is the foundational authority that the rights and entitlements of the Act run to the wider class of persons with disabilities, not only to the certified forty-per-cent cohort.

The Court was alive to the practical worry that opening scribe access beyond benchmark candidates would invite abuse. It answered that the apprehension of misuse can never justify denying a genuine right; the proper response is a calibrated certification and verification mechanism, not a blanket exclusion. It accordingly observed that the State must devise guidelines for facilitations that are inclusive of persons with disabilities who do not have a benchmark disability, with appropriate safeguards. This reframing, that the burden lies on the State to design a workable accommodation rather than on the individual to fit a rigid category, is the administrative heart of the decision and the template that Avni Prakash would shortly apply.

Why Vikash Kumar matters: the social model and disproportionate burden

Three propositions from Vikash Kumar recur in every subsequent case. First, the Act embraces the social model of disability: the judgment records that "societal and physical constraints" are at the heart of exclusion, displacing the older medical model that located disability solely in the body. Second, reasonable accommodation is a positive duty, and the Court warned that "reasonable accommodation demands a departure from the status quo and hence avoidable complications are inevitable", administrative inconvenience is not a defence. Third, the only permissible limit is "disproportionate or undue burden", a high threshold the State must affirmatively justify, not assume.

The decision also articulated the principle of substantive equality: treating unequals alike entrenches disadvantage, so the Constitution sometimes requires differential treatment. This reasoning, anchored in Articles 14, 19 and 21, supplies the constitutional spine for the entire statute and is the bridge between disability law and the wider equality jurisprudence examiners expect candidates to connect.

A fourth, often-overlooked contribution is the Court's insistence on inclusive interpretation. Where a welfare statute admits of two readings, the Court held, the one that advances inclusion and accessibility must prevail over the one that narrows the protected class. Disability rights, it stressed, are not a matter of charity or benevolence but of entitlement flowing from the dignity of the individual; the State's role is that of a facilitator obliged to dismantle barriers. The judgment thereby completed the migration, begun in Jeeja Ghosh, from a charity-and-medical paradigm to a rights-and-social paradigm, and it is routinely cited as the authoritative Indian statement of the social model. For aspirants, the examinable takeaway is the chain of reasoning, social model, substantive equality, positive duty of accommodation, disproportionate-burden limit, inclusive construction, rather than the result alone.

Rajive Raturi v Union of India (2017): the first round

The accessibility story begins earlier. Rajive Raturi v Union of India, (2018) 2 SCC 413, decided on 15 December 2017 by Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, arose from a writ petition under Article 32 filed in 2005 by a visually impaired human-rights worker. The petition sought barrier-free access to roads, footpaths, public transport, government buildings and information systems for persons with visual disabilities.

The 2017 Bench accepted that accessibility is integral to the dignity and autonomy guaranteed by Article 21 and issued a series of time-bound directions, drawn from the Accessible India Campaign and Section 40 onwards of the new Act: making important government buildings in identified cities accessible, retrofitting CPWD structures, accessibility audits at airports and railway stations, audible traffic signals, tactile guiding blocks on footpaths, and accessible public transport. The Court fixed deadlines, several of which fell in 2018 and 2019, and retained the matter. It was a strong statement of principle, but enforcement proved sluggish, which set the stage for the 2024 sequel.

Rajive Raturi (2024): the unfinished mandate returns

By 2024 the directions of 2017 remained largely unmet. The Court, now a Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud with Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, took the unusual step of appointing the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, to conduct an empirical, ground-level audit of accessibility compliance and to recommend enforceable standards. The judgment of 8 November 2024 (2024 INSC 858) is the product of that exercise.

The constitutional framing was elevated: the Court declared that accessibility is both a human right and a fundamental right, inseparable from the right to live with dignity under Article 21 and the equality guarantee under Article 14. It located the duty in Sections 40 to 46 of the Act, the chapter on accessibility, and treated compliance as mandatory rather than aspirational. For how these duties sit within the wider scheme, see the right to community living.

Rajive Raturi (2024): striking down Rule 15

The operative core of the 2024 judgment is the Court's treatment of Rule 15 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2017. Rule 15 made compliance with sectoral accessibility "guidelines" the standard, but those guidelines used persuasive, recommendatory language, words like "recommend" and "sensitise", rather than binding command. The Court held this to be "recommendatory guidelines under the garb of mandatory rules" and declared Rule 15 ultra vires the parent Act, because Section 40 read with Sections 44 to 46 contemplates mandatory minimum standards of accessibility, not optional best practices.

The Court drew a sharp doctrinal line between two distinct obligations. Accessibility is an ex-ante, collective duty rooted in universal design, environments built to be usable by everyone from the outset. Reasonable accommodation is an ex-post, individualised duty, adjustments made for a particular person in a particular case. The two are complementary but not interchangeable: a society cannot discharge its accessibility obligation merely by promising case-by-case accommodation, because that shifts the burden onto the disabled individual every time. This distinction, traceable to Vikash Kumar's reasoning, is now settled law.

Rajive Raturi (2024): the directions and their teeth

The Court directed the Union Government to frame, within three months and in consultation with NALSAR-CDS and disability organisations, a fresh set of mandatory non-negotiable accessibility standards, segregated from the merely desirable guidelines. It identified guiding principles the new standards must satisfy: prioritisation of universal design, coverage across every category of disability, integration of assistive technology, and continuing stakeholder consultation.

What gives the judgment teeth is its insistence on consequences. The Court tied non-compliance to enforcement levers in the Act, including the withholding of completion or occupancy certificates for inaccessible buildings and the penal provisions, so that accessibility ceases to be a costless promise. By making the standard mandatory and the breach consequential, Rajive Raturi (2024) supplied the enforcement architecture that the 2017 directions had lacked. It is the leading authority that the State's accessibility duties under the Act are justiciable and time-bound.

The Court was careful to explain why the binding-versus-recommendatory distinction matters so much in this field. A recommendatory regime, it reasoned, externalises the cost of exclusion onto disabled persons, who must litigate or beg for each individual adjustment, whereas a mandatory minimum internalises that cost into design and construction, where it is cheapest to bear. This is the practical wisdom behind universal design: it is far less expensive to build an accessible ramp than to retrofit one, and far less degrading than to carry a wheelchair user up a flight of stairs on each visit. The judgment also drew on the empirical NALSAR-CDS findings to show that two decades of voluntary compliance had produced patchy, token accessibility, the very pattern that the 2016 Act was enacted to end. Rajive Raturi (2024) thus reads as both a doctrinal correction and an evidence-based indictment of regulatory drift.

Jeeja Ghosh v Union of India: dignity in the skies

Predating the 2016 Act, Jeeja Ghosh v Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 761, decided on 12 May 2016 by Justices A.K. Sikri and R.K. Agrawal, remains a cornerstone. The petitioner, an eminent disability-rights activist with cerebral palsy, had boarded a SpiceJet flight from Kolkata to Goa with a valid ticket and completed boarding formalities, only to be forcibly de-boarded by the captain on a unilateral assessment that she was unfit to fly. No medical opinion was taken.

The Supreme Court held that persons with disabilities are entitled to live with dignity, equality and respect under Articles 14 and 21, drew expressly on the UNCRPD and the principles of reasonable accommodation, and condemned the airline's conduct as an affront to dignity. It awarded the petitioner compensation of Rs. 10 lakh and underscored the need for sensitisation and proper protocols. Jeeja Ghosh is the doctrinal precursor that imported dignity and reasonable accommodation into Indian disability jurisprudence, ground later occupied by Section 3 and built upon in Vikash Kumar.

Avni Prakash v NTA: scribe doctrine applied to the exam hall

Avni Prakash v National Testing Agency (Civil Appeal No. 7000 of 2021), decided in 2021 by a Bench including Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, is Vikash Kumar in action. The appellant, a candidate with dysgraphia certified as a person with benchmark disability under Section 2(r), sat the NEET-UG examination but was wrongfully denied the one hour of compensatory time to which she was entitled, owing to invigilator error.

The Court held she had been "wrongfully deprived" of her entitlement through no fault of her own and moulded relief to remedy the individual injustice. It reiterated the Vikash Kumar caution that the rights of persons with disabilities must not be diluted by importing the higher benchmark threshold where the Act does not require it, and clarified procedural questions about when a disability certificate must be furnished. Avni Prakash confirms that examination facilitations, scribes and compensatory time alike, are enforceable reasonable accommodations, not discretionary favours.

Net Ram Yadav v State of Rajasthan: accommodation in employment

Reasonable accommodation is not confined to examinations. In Net Ram Yadav v State of Rajasthan, decided on 11 August 2022 by a Bench led by Justice Indira Banerjee, a disabled senior teacher had been posted some 550 km from his home. A State circular directed appointing authorities to post persons with disabilities at or near their chosen location, but the State sought to force him to forfeit his seniority as the price of a nearer posting.

The Court held that a beneficial circular for persons with disabilities cannot be rendered otiose by attaching such a condition, and that the right to live with dignity must be interpreted liberally in relation to disabled employees. A disabled employee should not be compelled to surrender seniority to secure an accommodation the policy already promised. The case extends the dignity-and-accommodation logic of Jeeja Ghosh and Vikash Kumar into the domain of service law and posting.

Pragya Prasun v Union of India (2025): accommodation goes digital

The most recent extension is Pragya Prasun v Union of India (2025 INSC 599), heard with Amar Jain v Union of India and decided in 2025. Acid-attack survivors with facial and ocular disfigurement, and a fully visually impaired citizen, challenged the inaccessibility of digital and video KYC regimes: "liveness" checks requiring eye-blinks or on-screen reading, and apps incompatible with screen readers, were locking persons with disabilities out of bank accounts, SIM cards, pensions and welfare.

The Supreme Court declared that the right to digital access is an integral facet of the right to life under Article 21, and required regulators across finance, telecom and government to embed reasonable accommodation and accessibility (including WCAG-compliant interfaces) into technology-driven compliance. The judgment is the digital-age application of the Rajive Raturi accessibility mandate and the Vikash Kumar accommodation principle, confirming that the Act's guarantees follow persons with disabilities into the online public square.

Synthesis: the doctrinal map for examiners

For answer-writing, group the cases by the proposition each settles. On who is protected: Vikash Kumar and Avni Prakash establish that reasonable accommodation runs to the wide Section 2(s) class, not only the benchmark Section 2(r) cohort. On what the duty is: Vikash Kumar defines reasonable accommodation as a positive obligation limited only by disproportionate burden; Rajive Raturi (2024) separates accessibility (universal design, ex-ante, collective) from reasonable accommodation (individualised, ex-post). On enforceability: Rajive Raturi (2024) makes accessibility standards mandatory and consequential by striking Rule 15 as ultra vires; Net Ram Yadav makes beneficial policies non-defeasible.

On constitutional anchoring: Jeeja Ghosh, Rajive Raturi and Pragya Prasun root the rights in Articles 14 and 21 and in the UNCRPD, and trace the arc from physical dignity (de-boarding) through built-environment accessibility (public buildings) to digital inclusion (KYC). Tie every proposition back to Section 3 and the social model, and you reproduce the reasoning the Court itself uses. For the statutory foundations, revisit our introduction and the subject hub.