Gender & disability: Need inclusion at intersections

Anchal Bhateja knew she was breaking a barrier as the first blind woman to appear before the Supreme Court in June this year.

- Namita Bhandare

But, she says, she was “worried about how I would reach the court. How I would read the annexures, if asked. I needed to memorise the page numbers, in case the judges asked me which page something was on.” Then, she smiles: “It made the process more adventurous.

Fittingly, her client was a woman with visual disability challenging an ad by the Uttarakhand judicial services. Even though the law stipulates job reservations for people with disability, the ad inexplicably excluded those with visual impairment. “It was so arbitrary,” says Anchal.

Born with partial vision, Anchal lost her sight entirely just before her Class 10 board exams. No matter. She was able to get a scribe to write her papers. Two years later, when she took the Class 12 boards, she topped her district with 97.2%.