SCRIBE: Top Court On Accessibility in UPSC Exams

The Supreme Court’s decision in Mission Accessibility v. Union of India (2025 INSC 1376) marks another incremental but significant step in the Court’s ongoing project of transforming formal guarantees of equality into substantive mechanisms of inclusion.

Delivered in the context of public examinations spaces that often operate as gateways to socio-economic mobility the judgment reinforces that constitutional protections for persons with disabilities are not ornamental pronouncements but actionable commands that bind the State and its instrumentalities.

What appears at first glance to be a dispute concerning scribe timelines and screen-reader software is, on closer examination, a reaffirmation of the constitutional architecture that threads Articles 14, 19 and 21 with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act), weaving a coherent mandate of dignity-centred governance.

The petitioner, Mission Accessibility, had sought reliefs aimed at dismantling procedural barriers that disproportionately burden visually impaired candidates in the Civil Services Examination.

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The demands were neither radical nor indulgent: flexibility in scribe registration, permission to use screen-reader-enabled laptops, and access to digital question papers in accessible formats.

Yet the fact that these measures remained contested underscores a continuing gap between statutory guarantees and administrative readiness.

The Court’s articulation acknowledges this lacuna with characteristic candour, holding that equality requires not the pretence of homogeneity but the removal of barriers that prevent individuals from standing on equal footing.

As the proceedings unfolded, the Court adopted a facilitative rather than adversarial posture, compelling iterative responses from the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

While the Commission initially confined itself to modest relaxations such as allowing changes of scribe subject to narrowly prescribed timelines it eventually confirmed, through a later affidavit, an in-principle decision to introduce screen-reader software across its examinations.

That recognition is important not only because of its eventual operational consequence, but because it acknowledges technological accessibility as a core element of the right to equal opportunity.

The Court, however, correctly refused to accept intent without infrastructure. It identified the absence of a roadmap, standardised protocols, and timelines as deficiencies that threatened to leave the promise of accessibility suspended in administrative limbo.

In response, the Bench issued a structured set of directions that convert intention into obligation.

These include mandating that every future examination notification explicitly permit scribe changes up to seven days before the test, with decisions to be delivered within three working days; requiring the UPSC to file a detailed compliance affidavit within two months specifying the timeline, modalities, and infrastructural standards necessary for deploying screen-reader software; and directing coordinated action between UPSC, DEPwD, NIEPVD, and the Union Government to ensure standardisation, security, and functional readiness across examination centres.

These directions are designed not merely to facilitate the upcoming exam cycle but to embed accessibility as a systemic feature rather than an episodic accommodation.

The judgment also performs an important normative function.

It reiterates that rights of persons with disabilities are not discretionary privileges conferred out of executive benevolence but constitutional entitlements rooted in dignity.

In framing the discussion within Articles 14 and 21, the Court signals that exclusion rooted in design or procedure is as constitutionally infirm as exclusion produced by overt discrimination.

This articulation extends the jurisprudential arc shaped by prior decisions on accessibility, ensuring that public institutions like the UPSC entrusted with gatekeeping access to governmental power operate with a heightened duty of care.

The Court’s concluding reflections arguably carry the greatest weight.

By locating inclusivity not in policy statements but in implementation, it calls attention to the persistent gap between progressive norms and administrative inertia.

The reminder that accessibility is a constitutional necessity rather than an aspirational ideal serves as a caution to institutions that continue to treat disability accommodations as logistical inconveniences.

With the matter now listed for compliance in February 2026, the Court signals its intent to monitor execution, reflecting a structural approach rather than a one-time adjudicatory intervention.

The judgment nudges India closer to a jurisprudence that understands accessibility as integral to citizenship itself an understanding that is long overdue but firmly aligned with the egalitarian promise at the heart of the Constitution.