INDIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Pooja Ramchandani, Kriti Kaushik, Suruchi Kumar and Suryansh Gupta, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.
India has been on the forefront in upholding the rights of persons with disabilities and the legal need to ensure their inclusion in society. The Persons with Dis - abilities (Equal Opportunity Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act was enacted in 1995, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Dis - abilities was ratified by India in 2007, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act was implemented in 2016 (“RPWD Act”) (repealing the aforementioned law of 1995), which refined the concepts of ‘benchmark disability’, ‘barriers’ and ‘reasonable accommoda - tions’. By way of the RPWD Act, all establishments, whether private or public, are required to statutorily implement an ‘equal opportunity policy’ and provide details of, inter alia, facilities and amenities to be provided to persons with disabilities to enable them to effective - ly discharge their duties and provision for assistive devices and barrier-free accessibility for people with disabilities. To enable inclusivity, various departments of the Government of India have frequently issued guidelines and policies on ‘universal electronic acces - sibility’ and ‘web-content accessibility’, with versions updated till 2023. However, despite the foregoing stat - utes, policies and guidelines, people with disabilities continue to face practical hurdles in conducting day- to-day affairs, and much room for improvement exists for true inclusion. In April 2024, a batch of petitions, invoking the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, were filed by sur - vivors of acid attacks having facial disfigurement and one individual having 100% blindness, against the Union of India and other respondents (including the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI)) seeking relief of, inter alia, effective compliance with accessibility standards by all public and private establishments conducting digital KYC)/ e-KYC/Video-KYC Pragya Prasun & Ors. v Union of India & Ors. (Writ Petition (C) No. 289 of 2024 and Amar Jain v Union of India & Ors. (Writ Petition (C) No. 49 of 2025]. The petitioners highlighted the following:
• Among various other structural barriers, officials and third-party agents deployed by ‘regulated enti - ties’ (ie, banks, financial institutions, non-banking finance companies, asset reconstruction com - panies, payment system providers and agents of money transfer services) conducting KYC process are not adequately trained or sensitised to assist persons with blindness in performing or facilitating the digital KYC process. • People with blindness are often asked to physically visit the premises, and more often than not their applications are rejected on technical grounds. • The RBI ‘Master Directions on KYC’ prohibit prompting while performing digital KYC, thereby leaving people with blindness without any effective remedy, and they are unable to independentlycom - plete the digital KYC process due to the inacces - sibility of the current regulations. In so doing, people with facial/eye disfigurement and blindness are excluded from accessing digital services provided by both private and public establishments. The petitioners prayed that all public and private insti - tutions, specifically banks, financial institutions, ser - vices providers and any intermediaries who conduct KYC, should adapt, and adopt suitable alternative methods, wherever on account of disabilities digital KYC to demonstrate ‘liveness’ is not feasible, beyond the traditional ‘blinking of eyes’. The Apex Court reviewed the existing guidelines framed by the RBI as regards KYC processes for visu - ally impaired persons as well as acid attack survivors, identified deficiencies and loopholes in the existing guidelines, and gave directives to make the guidelines more meaningful and effective. The Apex Court under - scored the requirement for digital transformation to be both inclusive and equitable to satisfy the principle of substantive equality. Adhering to the directives of the Supreme Court, the RBI, as of 14 August 2025, has amended the ‘Master Directions on KYC’, and SEBI issued a circular on 31 July 2025, requiring all regulated entities to adhere to the provisions of the RPWD Act including conducting training sensitisation of staff and third-party service providers on behaviour, assistive tools and inclusive experience for differently abled users.
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