Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the principal secretary to government of Tamil Nadu, department of welfare of differently abled persons and commissioner of state transport corporation to furnish the facts and figures with evidence including photographs relating to the infrastructure available in the educational institutions, hospitals and government buildings for facilitating the access to the disabled persons along with the details of the budgetary allocations for the same and plans for improving such facilities to the special class of persons.
A division bench comprising Justices Vineet Kothari and Anita Sumanth gave the directive on the Public Interest Litigations filed by L.Muruganandam of Tirupur district.
Referring to the submission that there were only 10 out of 23,998 buses of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation available for easy access to the persons with locomotive disability, the bench said prima facie it appears to be wholly inadequate in number. Therefore the transport commissioner may furnish a report to the availability of the buses which can suitably modified to provide easy access and ride to the persons of this class and also their plans of acquiring more number of such buses which may provide more facility to a larger section of this class of persons in Tamil Nadu.
The bench posted to January 3, further hearing of the case.
In his PILs, Muruganandam sought a direction to the state and central governments to make facilities in all the educational institutions and the government buildings within the state completely accessible by providing ramps with gradient 1:20 with a minimum width of 1,800mm and with hand railings to all the access points of electric operated lifts with operators. He also sought a direction to provide automated motorized wheel chairs with height adjustment canes and accessible toilet facilities, besides facilities for proper access route accessible corridor lobby and pathways for differently abled, particularly in educational institutions.
