Chapter V of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (Sections 24 to 28) is where the statute stops speaking the language of aspiration and starts speaking the language of entitlement. Section 24 commands the appropriate Government to formulate social-security schemes for an adequate standard of living and, in a remarkable proviso, fixes the quantum of assistance at least twenty-five per cent higher than comparable schemes for non-disabled persons. Sections 25 to 28 then build out the architecture of healthcare, insurance, rehabilitation and research that a substantive-equality regime requires. For judiciary and CLAT-PG aspirants, this cluster is examined both as bare-provision recall and as the doctrinal home of the Supreme Court's dignity and reasonable-accommodation jurisprudence. This chapter sets out the verified text of each section, its conditional structure, and the case law that gives it teeth.
The architecture of Chapter V
Chapter V of the RPwD Act, 2016 is titled "Social Security, Health, Rehabilitation and Recreation" and spans Sections 24 to 30. The first five of these (Sections 24 to 28) form the social-welfare core that this chapter addresses, while Sections 29 and 30 deal with culture, recreation and sporting activities. The drafting follows a deliberate pattern: each obligation is cast on the appropriate Government (and, in Sections 25 and 27, on local authorities as well), and several are qualified by the phrase "within the limit of its economic capacity and development." That qualifier is significant. It signals that these are progressive-realisation obligations modelled on Article 4(2) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which India ratified in 2007, rather than immediately-enforceable absolute rights like the non-discrimination guarantee in Section 3.
The distinction matters for exam answers. The right to equality and non-discrimination under Sections 3 to 20 is unconditional, whereas the welfare entitlements in Chapter V are conditioned on economic capacity and, in many clauses, on income ceilings "as may be notified." Yet the Supreme Court has been careful to ensure that the economic-capacity caveat does not become an alibi for inaction, reading the chapter alongside the dignity jurisprudence of Article 21. The hub overview at the RPwD Act notes hub places this chapter within the broader scheme of the Act.
Section 24: social security and the 25% premium
Section 24(1) requires the appropriate Government, within the limit of its economic capacity and development, to "formulate necessary schemes and programmes to safeguard and promote the right of persons with disabilities for adequate standard of living to enable them to live independently or in the community." The notion of an "adequate standard of living" is lifted directly from Article 28 of the UNCRPD, and the phrase "independently or in the community" ties Section 24 to the right to community living under Section 5.
The provision that most often features in objective questions is the proviso to Section 24(1): the quantum of assistance under such schemes "shall be at least twenty-five per cent higher than the similar schemes applicable to others." This is a rare instance of the legislature hard-coding a quantitative floor for disability welfare, recognising the additional cost of living with a disability. Section 24(2) then directs that in devising these schemes the Government shall give "due consideration to the diversity of disability, gender, age, and socio-economic status" — a textual anchor for the intersectionality reasoning the Supreme Court later deployed in Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2021).
Section 24(3): the eleven mandated scheme heads
Section 24(3) is the operative heart of the social-security guarantee. It provides that the schemes under sub-section (1) "shall provide for" eleven heads, lettered (a) to (k). These are: (a) community centres with good living conditions in terms of safety, sanitation, health care and counselling; (b) facilities for persons including children with disabilities who have no family, have been abandoned, or are without shelter or livelihood; (c) support during natural or man-made disasters and in areas of conflict; (d) support to women with disability for livelihood and for upbringing of their children; and (e) access to safe drinking water and appropriate, accessible sanitation facilities especially in urban slums and rural areas.
The financially significant heads follow: (f) aids, appliances, medicine, diagnostic services and corrective surgery free of cost subject to a notified income ceiling; (g) disability pension subject to a notified income ceiling; (h) unemployment allowance to persons with disabilities registered with a Special Employment Exchange for more than two years who could not be placed in any gainful occupation; (i) care-giver allowance to persons with disabilities with high support needs; (j) a comprehensive insurance scheme for persons with disability not covered under the Employees' State Insurance Scheme or other statutory or Government-sponsored insurance; and (k) any other matter the appropriate Government may think fit. Note that heads (f) and (g) are expressly subject to income ceilings, so the entitlement is means-tested, not universal — a point frequently tested in distinguishing absolute from conditional rights.
Dignity as the lodestar: Jeeja Ghosh
Although Jeeja Ghosh v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 761, predates the operative provisions of the 2016 Act and was decided under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, it supplies the constitutional grammar that animates Chapter V. The petitioner, an activist with cerebral palsy, was de-boarded from a SpiceJet flight at Kolkata in a manner the Court found callous and discriminatory. A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and R.K. Agrawal held that the rights conferred on persons with disabilities "are founded on the sound principle of human dignity which is the core value of human rights" and awarded ₹10 lakh as compensation.
The significance for Sections 24 to 28 is that Jeeja Ghosh recasts welfare provisions not as benevolence but as facets of the right to live with dignity under Article 21. When a State pleads "economic capacity" to dilute a Section 24 scheme, Jeeja Ghosh furnishes the counter-principle that dignity sets a floor below which welfare cannot fall. The case is also a staple illustration of how the rights and entitlements framework draws its normative force from constitutional dignity rather than statutory charity.
Two features of the judgment are worth memorising for mains answers. First, the Court relied on an expert opinion from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (the Kothari Committee report) to conclude that the airline staff had acted without sensitivity, treating the petitioner as an object of pity rather than a rights-holder. Second, the Court read the 1995 Act in harmony with the UNCRPD even though the 2016 statute had not yet been enacted, demonstrating the technique of treaty-consistent interpretation that later courts applied to the 2016 Act. The result is that Jeeja Ghosh functions as a bridge case: decided under the old law, but supplying the dignity vocabulary that the new Chapter V presupposes.
Section 25: healthcare and prevention
Section 25 operates in two registers. Section 25(1) casts a duty on the appropriate Government and local authorities to provide persons with disabilities (a) free healthcare in the vicinity, specially in rural areas, subject to a notified family-income ceiling; (b) barrier-free access in all parts of Government and private hospitals and other healthcare institutions and centres; and (c) priority in attendance and treatment. The inclusion of private hospitals in clause (b) is notable — the accessibility obligation reaches beyond State establishments, dovetailing with the accessibility mandate in Sections 44 to 46.
Section 25(2) shifts from treatment to prevention, requiring measures and schemes to "promote healthcare and prevent the occurrence of disabilities." Its eleven clauses (a) to (k) include surveys and research into the causes of disabilities (clause a), annual screening of all children to identify "at-risk" cases (clause c), training of primary-health-centre staff (clause d), pre-natal, perinatal and post-natal care (clause f), healthcare during natural disasters and situations of risk (clause i), life-saving emergency treatment (clause j), and — importantly — "sexual and reproductive healthcare especially for women with disability" (clause k). Clause (k) is a textual recognition of the reproductive autonomy of women with disabilities, a theme the Supreme Court addressed in Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration, (2009) 9 SCC 1, where it held that a woman with intellectual disability could not be subjected to a forced termination of pregnancy without her consent.
Section 26: insurance schemes for government employees
Section 26 is the shortest provision in the cluster and a frequent trap in objective papers. It reads in full: "The appropriate Government shall, by notification, make insurance schemes for their employees with disabilities." The candidate must note two things. First, the obligation is mandatory ("shall") and is to be discharged "by notification." Second, and crucially, Section 26 is confined to the Government's own employees with disabilities — it is not a general insurance guarantee for all persons with disabilities.
The general-population insurance obligation lives elsewhere, in Section 24(3)(j), which mandates a "comprehensive insurance scheme for persons with disability" not otherwise covered by the ESI or similar schemes. Examiners routinely test whether a candidate can locate the correct source: government-employee insurance is Section 26, whereas comprehensive insurance for the wider disabled population is a Section 24(3) social-security head. Confusing the two is a classic error.
Section 27: rehabilitation and the NGO partnership
Section 27(1) requires the appropriate Government and local authorities, again "within their economic capacity and development," to undertake or cause to be undertaken "services and programmes of rehabilitation, particularly in the areas of health, education and employment for all persons with disabilities." The three named domains — health, education and employment — mirror the pillars of the substantive-equality model the Act adopts. Section 27(2) empowers the Government and local authorities to grant financial assistance to non-Governmental Organisations for this purpose, while Section 27(3) requires that, in formulating rehabilitation policies, they "shall consult the non-Governmental Organisations working for the cause of persons with disabilities."
The consultation duty in Section 27(3) reflects the UNCRPD's foundational slogan "nothing about us without us," guaranteeing that the disability sector participates in shaping the policies that govern it. A point worth noting for mains answers: the 2016 Act draws a deliberate vocabulary distinction between "rehabilitation" (restoring function lost through acquired disability) and "habilitation" (developing function for the first time, relevant to congenital disability). Section 27 speaks of rehabilitation, while Section 28 expressly speaks of both "habilitation and rehabilitation."
Section 28: research and development
Section 28 closes the social-welfare cluster: "The appropriate Government shall initiate or cause to be initiated research and development through individuals and institutions on issues which shall enhance habilitation and rehabilitation and on such other issues which are necessary for the empowerment of persons with disabilities." Unlike Sections 24 and 25, Section 28 has no lettered sub-clauses — it is a single, broadly worded mandate. Two drafting features deserve attention. First, research may be conducted "through individuals and institutions," contemplating outsourcing to universities, research bodies and civil-society organisations rather than only departmental research. Second, the twin reference to habilitation and rehabilitation confirms that the Act's research agenda covers both congenital and acquired disability.
Section 28 should be read alongside the institutional machinery the Act creates — the national and State institutes, the Chief Commissioner and State Commissioners, and the Central and State Advisory Boards — which provide the bodies through which research findings can be translated into policy. While litigation directly enforcing Section 28 is sparse, the provision supplies a statutory hook for evidence-based policymaking, complementing the prevention-of-disability research mandate already embedded in Section 25(2)(a).
For comparison, the predecessor statute, the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, addressed the subject through Section 48, which directed the appropriate Government and local authorities to promote and sponsor research in five enumerated areas: (a) prevention of disability; (b) rehabilitation including community-based rehabilitation; (c) development of assistive devices including their psycho-social aspects; (d) job identification; and (e) on-site modifications in offices and factories. The 2016 Act consolidates that itemised enumeration into the single, broadly worded mandate of Section 28, trusting the executive to give it content through schemes and the institutes established under the Act. Candidates contrasting the 1995 and 2016 regimes should note this shift from detailed statutory direction to a general empowering provision — a recurring drafting choice in the newer Act.
Reasonable accommodation: Vikash Kumar
The single most important judgment for understanding how the entitlements in Chapter V are enforced is Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission, (2021) 5 SCC 370, decided on 11 February 2021 by a three-judge Bench led by Justice Dr D.Y. Chandrachud. The appellant suffered from writer's cramp (a form of dysgraphia) and was denied a scribe for the Civil Services Examination because he did not have a "benchmark disability" of 40% or more. The Court allowed the appeal and held that the absence of a benchmark disability cannot be used to deny reasonable accommodation, which it located in the definition of discrimination under Section 3 read with Section 2(y).
The Court drew the crucial structural distinction that benchmark disability is a precondition only for specific entitlements such as reservation in education (Section 32) and employment (Section 34) in Chapter VI — it does not gate the general right to reasonable accommodation and dignity that runs through the Act. By the same logic, the welfare entitlements in Sections 24 to 28 attach to "persons with disabilities" generally, not only to persons with benchmark disabilities, except where a clause expressly imposes an income ceiling or registration condition. Vikash Kumar thus governs how the entire RPwD scheme — including Chapter V — is to be construed: purposively, in favour of inclusion, and with the denial of accommodation itself treated as discrimination.
Intersectionality and Section 24(2)
Section 24(2)'s direction to consider "the diversity of disability, gender, age, and socio-economic status" finds its doctrinal echo in Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2021) 16 SCC 225, decided on 27 April 2021. The case concerned the sexual assault of a blind woman belonging to a Scheduled Caste. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, writing for the Court, expressly adopted the framework of intersectionality, recognising that disability, gender and caste combine to produce a compounded experience of subordination that single-axis analysis cannot capture.
The Court also issued guidelines directing that the testimony of a witness or prosecutrix with a disability "cannot be considered weak or inferior" merely because such a person interacts with the world differently, and called for a more disability-friendly criminal-justice system. For Chapter V, Patan Jamal Vali supplies the interpretive key to Section 24(2): welfare schemes must be designed with sensitivity to overlapping vulnerabilities, so that a poor, rural, disabled woman is not left to fall through the cracks of a scheme designed for an undifferentiated "disabled person."
Enforcement: from Sunanda Bhandare to continuing mandamus
The judicial technique for enforcing welfare obligations of this kind is the continuing mandamus, illustrated by Justice Sunanda Bhandare Foundation v. Union of India, (2017) 14 SCC 1. Originating as a 1998 writ petition under the 1995 Act seeking effective implementation of reservation for persons with disabilities, the litigation continued for nearly two decades. On 25 April 2017 the Supreme Court, noting the coming into force of the 2016 Act, directed the Union and States to compute vacancies, identify posts and file compliance reports, refusing to let the change of statute defeat accrued obligations.
The lesson the case carries into Sections 24 to 28 is that the "economic capacity" caveat is not a licence for indefinite delay: courts will monitor implementation, demand affidavits and compliance reports, and treat sustained non-implementation of mandatory welfare schemes as actionable. Read with Vikash Kumar and Jeeja Ghosh, Sunanda Bhandare completes the enforcement triad — dignity supplies the principle, reasonable accommodation supplies the test, and continuing mandamus supplies the remedy.
The same enforcement temper appears in State of Himachal Pradesh v. Umed Ram Sharma, (1986) 2 SCC 68, where the Court treated access — there, a road — as inseparable from the right to life, a logic that today supports reading the barrier-free-access clause in Section 25(1)(b) and the accessibility provisions as enforceable rather than aspirational. More recently, in Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, (2018) 2 SCC 413, the Supreme Court issued binding directions on accessibility of public spaces, holding that the right of persons with disabilities to move safely is a facet of the right to life and dignity under Article 21. While Rajive Raturi arose primarily under the accessibility provisions, its insistence that the State cannot indefinitely defer compliance reinforces the reading of Chapter V duties as enforceable obligations subject to judicial supervision rather than optional welfare gestures.
Who must act: the 'appropriate Government' and economic capacity
Every obligation in Sections 24 to 28 is addressed to the "appropriate Government," defined in Section 2(a) of the Act by reference to whether the establishment is owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Central or a State Government. Sections 25 and 27 additionally bind "local authorities," widening the circle of duty-bearers to municipalities and panchayats — a deliberate choice given that primary healthcare and grassroots rehabilitation are delivered at the local level.
The recurring qualifier "within the limit of its economic capacity and development" (Sections 24(1) and 27(1)) imports the UNCRPD's progressive-realisation standard. Crucially, progressive realisation is not the same as non-justiciability: the State bears the burden of demonstrating that it is using the maximum of its available resources and moving expeditiously toward full realisation. A blanket plea of poverty, unaccompanied by data, will not survive judicial scrutiny under the dignity standard set in Jeeja Ghosh. Candidates should therefore frame Chapter V obligations as conditional but enforceable, never as mere directive-principle exhortations.
Exam takeaways and common traps
Five points reliably appear in objective and short-note questions. First, the 25% premium proviso to Section 24(1) is the most-tested numerical fact in the cluster. Second, candidates must distinguish Section 26 (insurance for the Government's own employees) from Section 24(3)(j) (comprehensive insurance for the general disabled population). Third, the unemployment-allowance condition under Section 24(3)(h) requires registration with a Special Employment Exchange for more than two years without placement — the two-year period is a favourite detail.
Fourth, only certain Section 24(3) heads are means-tested: free aids and appliances under clause (f) and disability pension under clause (g) are "subject to such income ceiling as may be notified," whereas care-giver allowance (i) and disaster support (c) are not income-gated in the text. Fifth, remember the habilitation/rehabilitation pairing in Section 28 and the consultation duty under Section 27(3). For a fuller map of the statutory scheme, see the notes on definitions and the introduction to the Act.
For mains and viva, the framing that scores is to present Chapter V as the bridge between the constitutional promise of dignity in Jeeja Ghosh and the concrete budget commitments the State must make. A strong answer will: state the bare provision accurately (especially the 25% premium and the two-year unemployment-allowance condition); identify the conditional 'economic capacity' character of Sections 24 and 27 while resisting the conclusion that they are non-justiciable; invoke Vikash Kumar for the proposition that reasonable accommodation and dignity are not confined to benchmark disabilities; and deploy Patan Jamal Vali to show that Section 24(2)'s diversity mandate has been judicially read as a command to design intersectional, not one-size-fits-all, welfare. Tied together with the continuing-mandamus remedy from Sunanda Bhandare and the accessibility logic of Rajive Raturi, these provisions form a coherent, enforceable social-security guarantee rather than a catalogue of pious hopes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the '25% higher' rule under Section 24?
The proviso to Section 24(1) of the RPwD Act, 2016 requires that the quantum of assistance to persons with disabilities under social-security schemes be at least twenty-five per cent higher than similar schemes applicable to others. It recognises the additional cost of living with a disability and is the most frequently tested numerical fact in this chapter.
Does Section 26 cover insurance for all persons with disabilities?
No. Section 26 mandates the appropriate Government to make insurance schemes, by notification, only for its own employees with disabilities. The broader entitlement to a comprehensive insurance scheme for persons with disabilities not covered by the ESI or similar schemes lies in Section 24(3)(j), not Section 26. Confusing the two is a common error.
How did Vikash Kumar v. UPSC affect Chapter V entitlements?
Vikash Kumar v. UPSC, (2021) 5 SCC 370, held that reasonable accommodation is a facet of equality and that denial of accommodation is itself discrimination under Section 3. It clarified that benchmark disability is a precondition only for specific entitlements like reservation (Sections 32 and 34), not for general welfare and accommodation rights, which attach to persons with disabilities broadly.
What is the difference between rehabilitation and habilitation in the Act?
Rehabilitation refers to restoring function lost through an acquired disability, while habilitation refers to developing function for the first time, relevant to congenital disability. Section 27 speaks only of rehabilitation, whereas Section 28 expressly covers both 'habilitation and rehabilitation' in its research mandate.
Are the Section 24 social-security entitlements absolute rights?
No. They are conditioned by the phrase 'within the limit of its economic capacity and development,' reflecting the UNCRPD's progressive-realisation standard, and several heads (free aids under clause (f) and disability pension under clause (g)) are subject to notified income ceilings. However, as Jeeja Ghosh v. Union of India, (2016) 7 SCC 761, makes clear, the economic-capacity caveat cannot be used to fall below the dignity floor of Article 21.
What conditions attach to the unemployment allowance under Section 24?
Under Section 24(3)(h), unemployment allowance is payable to persons with disabilities who have been registered with a Special Employment Exchange for more than two years and who could not be placed in any gainful occupation. Both the registration requirement and the two-year period are commonly tested.