JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION, INDIA
VOL. 21, 2022
could appeal against the order of limited guardianship. Section 14 has more deeply ensconced
instead of prising out the institution of guardianship in the RPDA.
The next section examines how the MHCA has addressed the right to legal capacity.
4. Legal Capacity in the MHCA
The preamble to the MHCA, like the RPDA, also states that the statute was enacted to
harmonise existing Indian laws with the Convention. Unlike the RPDA, the MHCA does not
refer to the principles of the CRPD. In fact, Section 3 of the MHCA is a reproduction of principle
4 of the MI Principles.19 The inclusion is significant because while the preamble of the CRPD
mentions all soft law instruments on disability antedating the Convention, the MI Principles
were omitted by plan as persons with psycho-social disability objected to its inclusion.
Section 4 of the MHCA addresses the matter of the capacity to make mental health care and
treatment decision. Section 4(1) declares that every person including a person with mental
illness shall be deemed to have the capacity to make decisions regarding their mental health
care and treatment. This declaration is soon qualified by the proviso, which allows for the
capacity if such a person “has ability to
(a) understand the information that is relevant to take a decision on the treatment or
admission or personal assistance, or
(b) appreciate any reasonably foreseeable consequences of a decision, or
(c) communicate the decision” whether verbally or non-verbally.
Section 4 illustrates the very conflation between legal capacity and mental capacity that the
Treaty Body warns against in the General Comment.
The linking of agency to mental capacity is again, in evidence, in the manner in which the
MHCA has provided for advance directives. Section 5 of MHCA allows persons with mental
illness to make advance directives to provide for periods when they lack capacity. Thus,
the making of advance directives does not grant freedom to a person with psycho-social
19
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Principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care https://www.ohchr.org/en/
instruments-mechanisms/instruments/principles-protection-persons-mental-illness-and-improvement (last visited 28 Oct. 2022).