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Come January 24th, 2021, the AIBE i.e., the All-India Bar Examination is set to take place. A law graduate with permanent vision disability set to appear for the AIBE 2021 said that the Bar Council of India has been creating barriers pertaining to the entry of disabled lawyers at the start of their careers. He alleged that the Bar council of India were not making the due accommodations necessary for a person with a disability, especially a permanent disability, as mandated by the government of India. In 2018, the Public Works Department released guidelines for conducting written examinations for persons with Benchmark Disabilities. Section 2(r) of The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 describes a benchmark disability. So in the case of blindness, as per the previously mentioned definition, it would encompass any person for whom 40% or more of their vision is compromised affecting adversely their ability to write and the speed of their writing.
Part IV of the Office Memorandum of the said guidelines dictate that people with the benchmark disability of blindness should be provided with the facility of a scribe/reader/lab assistant, provided the person in question desires the same. The guidelines also prescribe that the candidate with the disability should have the option of choosing their own scribe/lab assistant/reader provided their qualifications are one step below theirs and they should be equipped with suitable resources and software (for open examinations) to assist them with a compensatory time of 20 minutes or more per hour for the examination.
Similar aids and accommodations were requested by the candidate in question including bringing his scribe, compensatory time of 20 minutes per hour, and approval to carry a laptop with software to aid him with the Open book examination. The request for a laptop was initially denied as a direct violation of the above guidelines, following which after certain persuasion he was allowed a laptop with no internet, while the other two requests were delayed. As for the compensatory time, any person which benchmark disability (40% or above) is eligible to avail the same, however, BCI has the minimum bar of 50% disability. The student also faced other issues where the BCI acted differently from the prescribed guidelines. They claimed that BCI has no proper grievance resolution system, adding to the issue.
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