Mumbai, India — The Bombay high court in India ordered Wednesday that the state government should set up centers for children with learning disabilities in each of its districts.
Learning disability is among 12 of those added to the list of disabilities by the Union Ministry of Social Justice through a bill in the Rajya Sabha, and the centers that the Bombay high court hopes for the state government to set up will be responsible for the assessment of the children’s learning disability, as well as the issuance of certificates.
At the moment, there are only four centers that function as such— three of them in Mumbai and one in Pune. Children who live in places outside of Mumbai and Pune will have to travel all the way to these centers.
Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice AK Menon through their divisions bench formed a committee responsible for providing technical assistance to the state government in setting up the new centers, comprised of Dr. Harish Shetty, the Medical Education Research and Public Health departments medical directors, as well as doctors from the KEM and BYL Nair hospitals.
The court also ordered the newly formed committee to develop an effective method in assessing learning disabilities without having to touch on how “severe” the disability might be, because experts say the severity in learning disabilities is immeasurable— unlike other disabilities. In the proposed assessments, children will only be labeled either learning disabled, or not, said the experts.
Source: Mustafa Plumber: DNAIndia.com: Bombay High Court tells Maharashtra government to set up centres in each district for students with learning disabilities