Almost half the State and Union Territory government buildings identified during access audits in 2016-2017 have been made accessible, while only around 8% of public buses are fully accessible under the Accessible India campaign that is scheduled to end in June, according to government data.
Data provided by the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry to the Rajya Sabha in response to a question by Nationalist Congress Party MP Vandana Chavan on February 9 showed that 48.5% of the State/Union Territory government buildings had been made accessible, as against the target of 50%. The campaign was launched in 2015 with the goal of making selected government buildings, transportation and websites accessible for persons with disabilities by March 2018. The deadline was then extended to March 2020 and then again to June 2022.
On the target of completing accessibility audits of at least 25-50 of the most important government buildings in 50 cities and making them fully accessible by June, the Ministry said audits had been completed in the 1,671 identified buildings. As on January 31, the Ministry had provided support to States to make 1,191 buildings accessible under the campaign and 20 States/Union Territories had reported making 577 (48.5%) buildings accessible. In addition, the Ministry said seven States and Union Territories had identified 2,839 of their buildings to be made accessible from their own funds. In the Central government, the Central Public Works Department reported completing retrofitting of 1,030 of the 1,100 selected buildings in 2020-2021.
While all 35 international airports and all 709 A1, A and B category railway stations had accessibility features, only 8.73% of government-owned buses were fully accessible, as against the target of 25%. Of the 1.41 lakh buses, 30% were “partially accessible”, the reply stated, citing information from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
On government websites, the target was to make at least 50% of Central and State government sites meet accessibility standards. The Ministry’s reply said ₹26.19 crore had been sanctioned to make 917 State/Union Territory government sites accessible, of which 603 had been done. Ninety-five websites of the Central government were made accessible as well, it said.
