The Imbroglio of Legal Capacity in Indian Disability Law Amita Dhanda* Abstract Subsequent to ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), India embarked on a programme of law reform, which entailed testing all Indian disability laws on the touchstone of the CRPD in order to bring them in harmony with it. A particularly contentious issue requiring close attention was the issue of legal capacity of all persons with disabilities. In order to understand how India addressed the issue, this article firstly constructs the CRPD mandate on legal capacity. Next, it examines how the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and the Mental Health Care Act, 2017 have addressed the right and the extent to which the provisions of the two statutes are in conformity with the CRPD. Since the two statutes have not addressed the matter of legal capacity in the same way, the last section comparatively evaluates them in order to determine which of the two statutes seems closer to the CRPD paradigm, and the direction law and policy reform should take in the future to resolve the imbroglio of legal capacity in the Indian disability law. 1. Introduction India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on 01 October 2007. Subsequent to the ratification, the process of bringing the laws and policies of the country in conformity with the CRPD was inaugurated. The issue of universal legal capacity of all persons with disabilities was amongst the most contentious questions addressed by the ad hoc Committee drafting the text of the CRPD. The Indian law reform process did not escape that fiery discord either. Several innovative proposals, especially around the redrafting of the National Trust (Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities) Act 1999 (NTA) did not even make it to the Law * Dr. Amita Dhanda is Professor Emerita at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad 31