Re-Examined, Re-Verified: Maharashtra's Humiliation of Disabled Workers

December 10 is Human Rights Day.

When the Puja Khedkar scandal broke earlier this year, I warned in an interview: “Those with genuine disabilities will now be doubly scrutinised.”

I wish I had been wrong. But what followed proved the prediction with painful accuracy.

Within weeks, a senior IAS officer in Telangana made a shocking remark that demeaned the competence of disabled officers. Soon after, a former G20 Sherpa and former CEO of Niti Aayog insinuated that persons with disabilities lack professional capability and reservation for disabled and transgender persons needs to be revisited.

And now comes the latest Tughlaqi farmaan – not from fringe voices but directly from the state machinery of Maharashtra, India’s second-most populous state and ironically the last major state to implement disability rules under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, doing it only in 2024.

The newly created Persons with Disabilities Welfare Department has issued a sweeping, legally unsound directive ordering all government departments, hospitals, and subordinate offices to re-verify and medically re-examine every disabled employee – faculty members, doctors, Class I officers, and administrators – irrespective of whether they already hold a permanent Unique Disability ID (UDID) or a legally valid disability certificate.

This is not governance. This is harassment masquerading as vigilance. And it raises some deeply troubling questions.

Why are only disabled employees treated like suspects?

No other reserved category – Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) – is asked to repeatedly “prove” their identity. Only persons with disabilities are subjected to the indignity of endless scrutiny: from pillar to post, from medical board to medical board, from exam to re-exam.

Why must only disabled officers undergo this ritual humiliation again and again?

A state that can’t clear its own backlog now wants to re-verify everyone

Maharashtra currently has 1.2 lakh pending UDID applications, the second-highest backlog in India. Fourteen district and sub-district hospitals – from Ahikyanagar, Yavatmal Nagpur, Nashik, Nanded, Nandurbar, Dharashiv, Jalna, Raigad, Sangli, Satara, Thane to Wardha – have not issued a single UDID card. Not one.

Yet instead of cracking down on this administrative paralysis, the government chooses to re-verify those who already hold valid, permanent certificates. Does Maharashtra have so much free time that it prefers re-examining legitimate employees rather than processing lakhs of pending cases?

'First, do no harm' – a principle forgotten

At KEM Hospital, ground zero of this bureaucratic overreach, 848 UDID applications remain pending in just the last three months. Instead of completing this backlog, KEM doctors are being asked to spend precious hours humiliating their own colleagues. Here, the phrase “primum non nocere” – first, do no harm – finds no resonance.

Those entrusted with healing are instead reproducing stigma and harm, violating the very ethics they teach their students.

Despite the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Om Rathod v DGHS, 2024, which accepted my recommendation of mandatory inclusion of a doctor with a disability in medical boards assessing disability, not a single such member is present in these re-verification boards.

Is the Maharashtra government choosing to ignore the Supreme Court?

Employees already submitted details in June: Why this second round of harassment?

In June this year, the state asked all departments to submit UDID details. Employees complied. Yet today, they are again being forced to undergo full medical examinations. What purpose does this serve except creating fear and subjugation?

A few journalists asked me why, if the order was issued in October, are concerns being raised only now? This is because many people with disabilities struggle with internalised ableism. After decades of societal messaging that they must “prove” they belong, many fear retaliation if they speak up. Silence should never be misread as agreement – it is often survival.

A form that asks for 'disability percentage before and after'

The new forms require doctors to list UDID disability percentage “before” and “after.”

But countless studies – and even lived experience – show that different doctors often assign different percentages despite the same guidelines. If two doctors issue two different disability percentages, will Mundhe take action against those doctors? Or is the harassment reserved only for disabled employees?

Training is mandatory: Why has Maharashtra not implemented it?

The RPDA 2016 mandates compulsory training on disability rights for doctors, judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats. Has Maharashtra trained even a fraction of its workforce? If not, how can disabled employees trust the fairness of these medical boards?

Where is the state commissioner for persons with disabilities?

Every state has a legally mandated watchdog – the state commissioner for persons with disabilities – to prevent such violations. Has it demanded accountability? Or is it silent while disabled employees stand in queues, clutching certificates they already earned with dignity?

This moment is bigger than a circular. It is about whether persons with disabilities in Maharashtra will be treated as citizens or suspects; as professionals or as burdens; as individuals with human rights or as bodies to be examined endlessly. What the state has unleashed is humiliation, not reform; suspicion, not justice; arbitrary power, not due process. This moment on Human Rights Day demands courage – from administrators, from doctors, and from society – to say clearly and unequivocally: Dignity is not negotiable.

Dr Satendra Singh is Director-Professor at University College of Medical Sciences and a disability justice advocate. Views are personal.

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