Coordinating Disability Rights: The Role of Central and State Committees

When India enacted the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, it wasn’t just creating a list of rights on paper. It was building an institutional architecture – committees, executive bodies, and commissioners – to make those rights real. At the very heart of this architecture are two bodies: the Central Co-ordination Committee (CCC) and the State Co-ordination Committees (SCC). Understanding how these committees are structured, what they do, and how they relate to each other is essential to understanding how disability law is administered in India.

Why coordination committees were necessary 🔗

Disability is not a single-ministry concern. It touches education, health, employment, urban infrastructure, rural development, finance, and more. Before the PWD Act, 1995, efforts by different government departments often worked in silos – with little communication between them and no unified policy direction. The result was fragmented service delivery and a lack of accountability.

The solution the Act adopted was to create dedicated coordination bodies at both the national and state levels. These are not merely advisory panels that submit reports and gather dust. They are statutory bodies with defined functions, a prescribed composition, and a clear mandate to keep the government honest about its commitments to persons with disabilities.

The Central Co-ordination Committee 🔗

Under Section 3 of the PWD Act, 1995, the Central Government is required to constitute the Central Co-ordination Committee by notification. This is a non-discretionary obligation – the word used in the Act is “shall,” not “may.”

Composition of the CCC 🔗

The CCC is a sizeable and deliberately multi-sectoral body. It consists of 39 members in total – 24 official members and 15 nominated members representing NGOs and associations concerned with disability. The Chairperson is the Minister in charge of the Department of Welfare (now the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment), and the Vice-Chairperson is the Minister of State for the same department.

The official members include Secretaries to the Government of India from a wide range of ministries: Welfare, Education, Women and Child Development, Expenditure, Personnel, Health, Rural Development, Industrial Development, Urban Affairs and Employment, Science and Technology, Legal Affairs, and Public Enterprises. Three Members of Parliament are also included – two elected from the Lok Sabha and one from the Rajya Sabha.

The nominated members include representatives of organisations working with persons with disabilities and experts in the field. Crucially, at least one woman and one person from Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes must be included among the nominated members. The Member-Secretary is the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Welfare dealing with disability affairs, serving ex officio.

Nominated members hold office for a term of three years. An ex officio member’s term ends when they cease to hold the office by virtue of which they were appointed. A member may be removed before the expiry of their term, but only after being given a reasonable opportunity to show cause. Disqualifications for membership include insolvency, unsoundness of mind, conviction for an offence involving moral turpitude, or conduct detrimental to public interest.

Functions of the CCC 🔗

Section 8 of the Act sets out the CCC’s primary function: to serve as the national focal point on disability matters and to facilitate the continuous evolution of a comprehensive policy for persons with disabilities. In specific terms, the CCC is empowered to:

Review and coordinate the activities of all government departments, governmental organisations, and NGOs dealing with disability-related matters. This is the core coordination function that gives the committee its name and purpose.

Develop a national policy to address issues faced by persons with disabilities. This is not merely advisory – the CCC actively participates in the creation of policy frameworks.

Advise the Central Government on the formulation of policies, programmes, legislation, and projects with respect to disability.

Advocate nationally and internationally – taking up the cause of persons with disabilities with concerned authorities and international organisations, with a view to securing disability-inclusive provisions in national plans and programmes shaped by international agencies.

Review donor funding policies in consultation with donor agencies, evaluating their impact on persons with disabilities.

The CCC must meet at least once every six months. It is bound by written directions from the Central Government. Importantly, a person’s membership of the CCC does not disqualify them from being elected to or serving as a member of either House of Parliament.

The Central Executive Committee 🔗

To assist the CCC in carrying out its work, Section 9 of the Act establishes the Central Executive Committee (CEC). The CEC is the executive arm of the CCC – it implements the decisions taken by the coordination committee and performs any additional functions delegated to it.

The CEC is chaired by the Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Welfare, and includes six persons not below the rank of Joint Secretary from different ministries, along with other designated officials. The Central Executive Committee is required to meet at least once every three months – more frequently than the CCC itself – reflecting its operational rather than policy-setting role. It may also co-opt persons temporarily for specific purposes, paying them fees and allowances as prescribed.

The State Co-ordination Committees 🔗

While the CCC operates at the national level, Section 13 of the PWD Act requires every State Government to constitute a State Co-ordination Committee (SCC) by notification. The SCC performs the same essential coordination and advisory role, but at the state level – making it the mechanism through which the Act’s mandate reaches individual states and their administrative machinery.

Composition of the SCC 🔗

The SCC mirrors the multi-sectoral composition of the CCC, adapted to the state level. The Chairperson is the Minister in charge of the Department of Social Welfare in the State Government. Members include Secretaries from relevant state departments, members of the state legislature, representatives of NGOs working with disabled persons, and, importantly, persons with disabilities themselves.

As with the CCC, at least one woman must be included among the nominated members. Nominated members serve a three-year term. The same disqualification conditions that apply to CCC members apply here as well. Casual vacancies are filled by fresh nomination, with the new member serving only for the remainder of the original term.

One important provision addresses Union Territories: no State Co-ordination Committee is constituted for a Union Territory. Instead, the CCC itself exercises the functions of the SCC for Union Territories, though it may delegate these powers to a designated person or body as specified by the Central Government.

Functions of the SCC 🔗

The SCC’s mandate, laid out under Section 16 of the Act, is to serve as the state-level focal point on disability matters. Specifically, the SCC is empowered to:

Review and coordinate the activities of all state government departments, governmental organisations, and NGOs dealing with matters relating to persons with disabilities within the state.

Develop a state policy to address issues faced by persons with disabilities – a localised counterpart to the national policy developed by the CCC.

Advise the State Government on the formulation of policies, programmes, legislation, and projects with respect to disability.

Review donor funding in consultation with donor agencies from the perspective of impact on persons with disabilities.

Take steps to ensure a barrier-free environment in public places, workplaces, public utilities, schools, and other institutions.

The State Executive Committee 🔗

Just as the CEC supports the CCC, each state also has a State Executive Committee (SEC) constituted under Section 19 of the Act. The SEC serves as the executive body of the SCC and carries out its decisions. It is chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and includes senior state officials and persons with disabilities as members. The SEC meets at least once every three months.

The relationship between the central and state committees 🔗

The CCC and SCCs are not independent of each other – they form an integrated two-tier structure. The CCC reviews and coordinates activities of all central ministries and departments, while the SCCs perform the same role at the state level. Together, they create a top-to-bottom chain of policy oversight and implementation accountability.

The CCC’s reach extends even into states through its oversight role – it is empowered to issue directions to the SCCs as needed. At the same time, the SCCs feed ground-level information upward, helping the CCC understand how national policy plays out in practice across different states with vastly different capacities and needs.

This two-tier structure also reflects India’s federal character. Disability-related services – education, health, employment at the state level – are administered by states. Having an SCC ensures that state governments have a dedicated mechanism to manage and coordinate their own disability-related activities, without waiting for directions from the Centre on every operational matter.

Significance and limitations 🔗

The coordination committees represent a genuinely significant institutional innovation. Before their creation, there was no single body at either the central or state level whose job it was to keep all the relevant departments talking to each other about disability. The CCC and SCCs changed that by making coordination a statutory obligation rather than a matter of administrative goodwill.

The Act also established the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities at the central level and Commissioners at the state level to safeguard rights and report on implementation – complementing the coordination committees with enforcement and grievance mechanisms.

However, it is worth noting that the PWD Act, 1995 has since been largely superseded by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which expanded the list of recognised disabilities from seven to twenty-one and introduced stronger rights-based provisions. The institutional framework under the 2016 Act builds on and modifies the committee structure established under the 1995 Act, reflecting lessons learned over two decades of implementation.

Nonetheless, the 1995 Act’s coordination committees remain legally and historically significant. They set the foundational precedent that disability governance requires dedicated inter-departmental coordination – a principle that continues to inform disability law and policy in India.

What do you think? Given that India now has the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 in place, do the coordination committee structures under the original 1995 Act still offer useful lessons for how disability governance should be organised? And how effectively do you think state-level committees can coordinate across departments when disability services are often underfunded at the state level?

References

1. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/12890/1/the_persons_with_disabilities_act,_1995_no._1_of_1996_date_01.01.1996.pdf
2. https://www.medindia.net/indian_health_act/persons-with-disabilities-act-1995-central-coordination-committee.htm
3. https://sje.rajasthan.gov.in/.Persons%20With%20Disability.pdf
4. https://www.punarbhava.in/index.php/legal-instruments/national-acts-and-rules/pwd-act-1995
5. https://pwds.mizoram.gov.in/page/chapter-iii-the-state-co-ordination-committee
6. https://www.studocu.com/in/document/nss-law-college/constitutional-law/pwd-act-1995-eng/48233918
7. https://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/reports_and_publication/statistical_publication/social_statistics/Chapter%208%20-National%20redressal.pdf
8. http://www.disabledhelpline.org/pwd-act-1995/