Key Terms & Concepts — UPSC Mains
Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024)
"The Supreme Court judgment of 8 November 2024 that struck down Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017 as ultra vires, holding that accessibility standards which the parent Act made mandatory could not be diluted into merely recommendatory guidelines by subordinate rules."
Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, decided on 8 November 2024 by a bench headed by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud with Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, addressed the enforceability of accessibility standards under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. Section 40 of the Act obliges the Central Government to formulate accessibility standards for the built environment, transport, and information and communication technology, and this obligation, read with the Act's enforcement scheme, was intended to be mandatory. Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017, however, had framed the resulting accessibility guidelines in recommendatory rather than binding language, effectively converting a statutory duty into administrative advice. The Supreme Court held that Rule 15 was ultra vires the parent Act to precisely that extent, since a subordinate rule cannot lawfully dilute an obligation the enacting statute made mandatory. The Court gave the Union three months to frame binding rules in consultation with stakeholders. The judgment is widely cited as the clearest illustration of how a rights-based statute can be undermined not by its own text but by the delegated legislation implementing it, and it is frequently paired with the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), launched 3 December 2015, whose accessibility deadlines had been repeatedly extended in the years before the ruling, precisely because the underlying standards carried no binding force until this judgment.
A high-value GS2 case establishing the limits of delegated legislation and the mandatory character of statutory duties; a clean, current example for essays and Mains answers on the gap between a rights-based law's text and its administrative implementation.
- 1 Decided 8 November 2024, bench headed by CJI D.Y. Chandrachud with Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
- 2 Struck down Rule 15, RPwD Rules, 2017 as ultra vires, to the extent it made accessibility standards recommendatory rather than mandatory.
- 3 Grounded in Section 40 of the RPwD Act, 2016, which obliges the Central Government to formulate accessibility standards.
- 4 Gave the Union three months to frame binding rules in consultation with stakeholders.
- 5 Illustrates how subordinate rules can dilute a statute's mandatory duty into unenforceable guidance, a general administrative-law principle.
- 6 Connected to the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan, launched 3 December 2015), whose deadlines had been repeatedly extended before this ruling.
Before Rajive Raturi, the Accessible India Campaign's built-environment and transport accessibility targets had been extended multiple times with no legal consequence, because Rule 15 had rendered the standards behind them merely advisory; the 2024 judgment removed that loophole by declaring the rule ultra vires.
