Department of Disabilities Affairs renamed Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities

The Department of Disability Affairs (Nishaktata Karya Vibhag) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has renamed as Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Viklangjan Sashaktikaran Vibhag).

The Gazette notification in this regard has been issued by the Government of India.

Census 2001 has revealed that over 21 million people in India as suffering from one or the other kind of disability. This is equivalent to 2.1 per cent of the population. Among the total disabled in the country, 12.6 million are males and 9.3 million are females.

Although the number of disabled is more in rural and urban areas. Such proportion of the disabled by sex in rural and urban areas. Such proportion has been reported between 57-58 percent for males and 42-43 percent females. The disability rate (number of disabled per 100,000 populations) for the country as whole works out to 2130. This is 2,369in the case of males and 1,874 in the case of females.

Among the five types of disabilities on which data has been collected, disability In seeing at 48.5 persons emerges as the top category. Others in sequence are: In movement (27.9 per cent), Mental (10.3 per cent), In speech (7.5 per cent), and In hearing (5.8 per cent).

The disabled by sex follow a similar pattern except for that the proportion of disabled females is higher in the category In seeing and In hearing.

Across the country, the highest number of disabled has been reported from the state of Uttar Pradesh (3.6 million). Significant numbers of disabled have also been reported from the state like Bihar (1.9 million), West Bengal (1.8million), Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra (1.6 million each).

Tamil Nadu is the only state, which has a higher number of disabled females than males. Among the states, Arunachal Pradesh has the highest proportion of disabled males (66.6 per cent) and lowest proportion of female disabled.