Left stranded by design: Supreme Court to examine how India's aviation boom forgot disabled travellers

NEW DELHI: India's airports are busier, newer and prouder than ever. For a disabled passenger, the journey can still collapse at the first click. The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a plea that describes a systemic and nationwide failure to implement accessibility across every stage of air travel, including booking, web check-in, airport entry and navigation, counter check-in, security screening, Digi Yatra processing, immigration, boarding, in-flight services and arrival assistance.

The wording matters. This is not a complaint about one rude staffer or one broken lift. The plea says the blind spots are built into the boom itself: systems scaled for speed and volume without the staff, design and accountability that the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 promises. When assistance depends on luck, dignity depends on luck too.

The human cost has already reached the court in individual stories. In a separate case, a woman with 75 per cent disability in her legs told the court she was asked repeatedly to stand during security checks at Kolkata airport and left to wheel herself without help. The court in that matter sought the Centre's response and spoke of the need for a standard operating procedure. The new plea asks why, years after the law, a procedure is still the exception.

The aviation question is part of a wider disability-rights scrutiny. In the Action for Autism public interest case, a Bench of Justice B. V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan has sought data from the insurance regulator on how many life-insurance policies insurers have actually issued to persons with autism, cerebral palsy, intellectual and multiple disabilities, and has listed the matter for November 19. Travel, insurance, education and work keep returning to the same gap between statute and service.

The court's examination will not rebuild an airport. It can, however, force the question that expansion plans avoid: who was this system designed for? A boom that strands the very citizens the law names first is not an accessibility lapse at the margins. It is a design choice, and it is now before the country's highest court.