The Allahabad high court has directed the authorities in Uttar Pradesh to ensure that proper parking spaces with clear access to facilities like lifts, pavement, playgrounds, community centres and gyms are made for persons with disability (PwD) in residential complexes.
“It is a fundamental right of a person with disability to have right to accessibility, for facilities which are common in a building or structure,” the high court said.
A division bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Siddharth Nandan in their order on February 26 said the government must ensure mandatory observance of the Accessibility Rules at the stage of granting permission to build any structure and before issuance of certificate of completion.
“The development authorities in the state of Uttar Pradesh to incorporate necessary guidelines, which may be necessary to ensure that persons with disability are not put to a inequitable position and the maps which is being sanctioned for such community living, it may be necessary that proper parking spaces may be made for persons with disability, from where there is a clear access to a common facility like lift and also provisions for convenience of persons with disabilities to have access to other common facilities like pavement, playgrounds, community centres, gymnasium etc,” the court said.
The high court was hearing a writ petition filed by M/S Scc Builders Private Ltd, a construction company, challenging an order passed against it under the provisions of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, concerning the parking space of an allottee at SCC Sapphire, a residential project in Ghaziabad.
The allottee, who was 90 percent disabled, had approached the Ghaziabad Development Authority with a complaint alleging that eight years after she purchased a flat, her parking was divided by the builder.
The state commissioner for persons with disabilities held the complaint to be correct and found that the act of the builder was causing a hindrance to the complainant in accessing the lift. The builder challenged the findings.
However, the court found that a representative of the petitioner-company was present in the proceedings. The court also found that the parking was divided without the consent of the original allottee. Thus, it declined to interfere with the findings.
“It is a fundamental right of a person with disability (PWD) to have right to accessibility, for facilities which are common in a building or structure, which is providing a shelter to an incumbent,” the court said, while disposing the writ petition.