Does the Karnataka RPWD Bill 2025 Truly advance Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities?

On 24 November 2025 the Karnataka government introduced the Karnataka Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Employment and Education Bill 2025, a necessary and timely intervention that is expected to address the exclusion faced by Persons With Disabilities (“PWD”) with relation to education and employment since a long time. India has nearly 30 million persons with disabilities, comprising of 13 million are employable, yet only about 3.4 million are actually employed. With respect to education, around 27 percent of children with disabilities never enter school, and in Karnataka just over half of the PWD, 51.4 percent, is literate. In the private sector the numbers paint a starker picture, with persons with disabilities forming less than 1 percent of the workforce in corporate workforce. This is estimated to cost India 210 billion dollars annually. However despite these implications, the law has failed to create an inclusive environment for PWD. For instance, the Central Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act is modelled on an incentive based approach towards private employers, relying on self-imposed behavioural practices. However in reality, this model has led to  limited results, faced by the difficulties of inadequate budgetary support.

It is in this context that this blog aims to make a two fold argument. First, it highlights the strengths as well as the lacunae in the Bill. Second, it suggests reforms to address the shortcomings by drawing inspiration from other jurisdictions.

Strengths

The Karnataka Bill contains several substantive measures that could materially strengthen access to employment and education for PWD’s. First, the bill tackles the under representation of PWD by requiring private establishments employing twenty or more persons to reserve five percent of total vacancies under Section 4(1).

Second, the bill strengthens accessibility under Section 6(6) by mandating that educational institutions prepare Accessibility and Inclusion Plans within six months and build the required physical and digital infrastructure, including assistive devices and scribes, within five years.

Third, the Bill provides for capacity building under Section 8(c) by requiring training programmes for teachers in inclusive pedagogy. Further, under Section 31, the bill provides for phase-wise implementation beginning with large establishments, safeguards against denial of promotions on account of disability, and mandatory reporting obligations.

Fourth, the bill ensures protection against data misuse of PWD by restricting disclosure of disability information and mandates anonymised public reporting, while an explicit anti-retaliation clause and the power to grant interim relief create real remedies for complainants, backed by a multi-tier grievance architecture with appellate authority.

Shortcomings

Although the bill is a step in the right direction, several lacunae, spanning conceptual ambiguities, enforcement design, and procedural gaps, that risk reducing it to formal legislation that falls short of genuine inclusion.

The primary concern is the bill’s use of public sector terminology. The reference to sanctioned posts and cadre strength borrows heavily from public sector service law, whereas private enterprises function through dynamic headcount planning . This differing reality gives employers the ability to avoid compliance with the reasoning there is no sanctioned posts, weakening the statutory mandate of reservation. There are similar concerns when it comes to carry forward provision for vacancies that haven’t been filled under Section 4(5) of the bill that imposes the obligation to carry forward vacancies for three recruitment cycles but gives no clarity with relation to the definition of a recruitment cycle in a private setting where there is continuous hiring instead of being done periodically. This lack of clarity would create scope for delay, manipulation and inevitably dilution of the obligation of quota. The exemption based on undue hardship that is given under section 3(5)  faces the same issue because it gives rise to lot of ambiguity regarding the definition of undue hardship, leaving such matters be decided by the employers at their discretion and weakening the statutory duty of providing reasonable accommodation.

The bill also cross-refers to “persons with disability” under Section 2(s) of the Rights of Persons with Disability (RPwD) Act, 2016. This requires a precise reading of the RPwD Act’s structure. Section 2(s) provides a broad functional definition of disability as a long-term impairment which, in interaction with barriers, hinders full participation in society, and is not limited to the Schedule. The Schedule is primarily relevant for “benchmark disability” under Section 2(r), which sets a forty-percent threshold for specific targeted benefits such as government employment reservation. However, a more grounded concern remains: by cross-referring to the RPwD Act’s definition without supplementation, the bill inherits the medicalised certification procedures that flow from that framework. Conditions such as ADHD, absent from the Schedule, face significant administrative barriers to recognition even under the functional definition.

With relation to education, section 6(5) of the bill grants exemption on the basis of “essential requirements”. This approach does not provide for a structured definition that is found in the framework of other countries. For instance, in United Kingdom, the provision that deals with competence standards is narrowly defined whereas the bill leaves open the definition of essential requirements.

The bill aims to ensure compliance through punitive fines rather than incentivising. These fines are deposited in the consolidated fund rather than a disability fund that would be dedicated to train or skill up PWDs. Applied irrespective of the size of establishment, the bill does not succeed as deterrence for large employers but ends up disproportionately burdening smaller ones.

Further, the failure to appoint grievance officers as required by the bill carries no repercussions and the bill provides no guarantee of legal aid for complainants. The Supreme Court has consistently stressed access to justice is very important for the wellbeing of PWD. Simultaneously, the bill does not create a duty on the state to reimburse expenditures incurred on assistive devices, workplace adaptations, or specialised support.

A glaring gap in the bill is its failure to address how it would fit in with broader framework encompassing the Central RPwD Act, 2016. Labour and education appear in the Concurrent List under Schedule VII and under Article 254(1), a state law that contradicts the a legislation enacted by the parliament on the same subject is considered void to the extent of the repugnancy unless it has received Presidential assent under Article 254(2). The RPwD Act already deals with the regulation of employment and education for PWDs. The Karnataka Bill goes further by mandating a five percent private sector reservation that the RPwD Act does not provide for and does so without explicitly seeking Presidential assent or articulating the constitutional basis for doing so. Whether the bill is an addition to or a derogation from the Central statute is a question courts will need to resolve if it is challenged. The bill should either seek Presidential assent under Article 254(2) or include an explicit compatibility statement explaining how its provisions operate within the existing Central framework, since a finding of repugnancy could dislodge its obligations.

Way Forward

The Bill should follow an approach different from the current sanctioned posts and replace it with a headcount-based metric that would be tied to an employer’s total workforce, reflecting the realities of private sector. The question of whether or not there is compliance could be ascertained by looking at the percentage of actual employees rather than an abstract sanctioned strength through audits done on a periodic basis. The carry-forward must be amended so as to ensure clarity by defining a recruitment cycle as twelve months, requiring demonstrable good-faith efforts before carry-forward is permitted.

Importantly though  KRVRS, a disability right advocacy group has consistently kept iterating that reservation in itself is not enough to ensure that there is substantive equality. Even in situations where quota obligation as required are met, PWD are often placed in lower-level roles and paid less than non-disabled colleagues in comparable work. The Bill should therefore require mandatory annual disclosure of minimum, median, and maximum compensation for PWD alongside data on monetary compensation for comparable peers, bringing to light hidden disparities and pushing employers toward real rather than formal equality.

While dealing with the provision relating to the definition of undue hardship, the Bill could adopt a structured multi factor test similar to the approach followed in the United States ADA an anti-disability discrimination law, which takes into account the nature and cost of accommodation, financial resources of the establishment and overall impact on business operations. To prevent exemptions in a frequent manner, any claim of undue hardship must be looked at in detail by an independent expert who would rely on financial thresholds such as percentage of payroll or capital expenditure.

Any meaningful reform of the incentive framework must first take in with what already exists. The RPwD Act envisages a National Fund for PWDs, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment administers EPF and ESI reimbursement schemes for employers of disabled workers. Karnataka must resolve the difficulties encountered by the existing scheme by ensuring the streamlining claim procedures, establishing a dedicated nodal agency and by clubbing fiscal incentives with compliance monitoring. Inspiration can be taken from comparative models. Germany’s levy system, where employers who fall short of quotas contribute to a dedicated fund that is used exclusively to promote the participation of severely disabled persons in working life, including accompanying assistance in working life. In a similar breadth, France gives permission to employers to fulfill quota obligations by making contributions to a body named “Agefiph” which works to find solutions for the underemployment of disabled persons. These two frameworks maintain a right balance between employer flexibility and addressing non-compliance through inclusion in a broader  ecosystem. In a similar fashion, Karnataka could create a state disability fund instead of making these fines as part of a contribution to the consolidated fund. Employers who meet or exceed the prescribed quota could be rewarded through positive incentives, such as tax rebates modelled on Bangladesh’s approach, which gives employers the incentive of significant rebates when a certain proportion of their workforce comprises PWD’s.

The State should also consider an Access to Work style programme inspired by the United Kingdom, when it deals with matters pertaining to employment by paying for assistive devices, job coaches, interpreters. This would ensure that smaller firm are willing to comply meaningfully by removing any financial burden that they would have to face simultaneously.

Finally, the bill must introduce direct penalties as a consequence for the failure to appoint grievance officers aided by faster remedial timelines, guaranteed legal assistance, disclosure of organisation-level recruitment to the public and pay data would collectively deter tokenism and make enforcement credible.

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