Supreme Court Dismisses Plea To Remove Time Limits On Shop Licenses For Disabled Persons

A bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Pankaj Mithal was hearing a petition where the petitioner challenged an Office Memorandum dated August 1, 2016 by which certain policies were laid down for the allotment and renewal of the license of shops, spaces, and sites for commercial utilisation at the Inter-State Bus Terminals of Delhi.

The petitioner took a reference to Section 37 of the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act, 2016 and claimed that once a person with a disability has secured an allotment, then he is entitled to be issued a license in perpetuity. As per the petitioner, granting license for a limited period does not serve the purpose of rehabilitating a disabled person. It was argued that once the intention of the statute was to rehabilitate a disabled person, the allotment should be in perpetuity.

Advocate for the petitioner, Subhasish Bhowmick, told the court that the petitioner is 100 percent blind and the policy laid down through the Disability Act gives 5 percent reservation. However, Section 37 does not specify a time limited till which the reservation could be exercised.

He said: "After three years, my disability will not disappear and the purpose of the Act is to accommodate me..."

The petitioner has challenged the Section 37 policy and pointed out that the February 12, 2019 order of the Delhi High Court, which dismissed the petition relying on Seema Tiwari & Ors. vs. Government of NCT of Delhi & Ors. (2017) wherein the same Office Memorandum was considered and similar prayer rejected, was wrongly decided.

Justice Narasimha: "You are doing more harm [by asking this remedy] because the government will not give it to the people because they will say if we have to give it to them, we will give it away as a lease/sale..."

The Delhi High Court on February 12, 2019 dismissed the petitioner's plea. The court said: “In our considered view, the provisions of the statute and the scheme of the policy is to grant benefit to all disabled persons and, therefore, the license is granted, as per the policy, for a fixed period of time, namely, 3 or 5 years and after expiry of the said license, it is renewed by giving chance to another disabled person to avail of the benefit. Thereby the number of persons who can avail of the benefit are increased. If the contention of the petitioner is accepted, that is, once an allotment is made in favour of a person with disability, it would continue to remain in his name for all times to come and the right of other similarly situated disabled persons to reap the benefit of the statutory provision and get advantage of the State's largeness would be adversely affected. This could never be the intention of the law makers or the statutory provision.”

Justice Narasimha said: "You are looking at [Section 37] very negatively...Whatever the utility or what the government provides, from that utility, 5 percent is reserved under Section 37...This is wrong in assuming that this is between a person who is getting nothing at all because he is disabled as against a person who is getting 5 percent preferential treatment but you are reminding it as giving it as 5 percent is a disability... You are doing so much disservice to the other categories of people by your assumption that I should get [reservation] permanently..."

Case details: Daya Swaroop v. Delhi Transport Infrastructure Diary No. 18089-2022