THE IMBROGLIO OF LEGAL CAPACITY IN INDIAN DISABILITY LAW incorporated the socio-economic rights guaranteed to persons with disabilities.17 This incorporation is especially significant as a more inextricable connection is seen between legal capacity and civil and political rights. Section 13 of the RPDA provides for legal capacity. The statutory sequence is at odds with the CRPD. The requirements of paragraph (5) of Article 12 have been incorporated as Sub-section (1) of Section 13. The text of paragraphs (1) and (2) have been amalgamated to create the text of Sub-section (2) of Section 13 whereby appropriate governments are required to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life and have equal recognition everywhere as persons before the law. Sub-section (3) addresses the issue of conflict of interest by requiring persons, who have such conflict, to abstain from supporting persons with disabilities. Though, significantly, possibly in recognition of the importance accorded to family ties in India, a family relationship is not equated with conflict of interest. The conflict of interest of a relation by blood, affinity or adoption would need to be established. Sub-section (4) of Section 13 accords complete freedom to a person with disability to alter, modify or dismantle any support arrangement. The only restriction on this freedom is that the effected change would apply prospectively. Sub-section (5) of Section 13 only exhorts the support person to not exercise undue influence and respect the autonomy, dignity and privacy of the person with disability. Semantic quibbles aside, Section 13 could be seen as a faithful incorporation of the legal capacity rights of the CRPD. The difficulties arise with Section 14, which provides for guardianship. The above narrative on Article 12 outlined how, in the opinion of the Treaty Body, the recognition of legal capacity ousts substituted decision-making for persons with disabilities and how regimes of substitution need to be replaced by systems of support. Contrary to the mandate of the CRPD, Section 14 (1) of the RPDA provides for a situation where a district court or any other designated authority finds that a person with disability is unable to take 17 The incorporation of the civil-political rights in the RPDA was controversial. Some disability groups feared that a statutory incorporation of their rights may result in the ouster of persons with disabilities from the constitutional discourse. The case law arising under the RPDA shows that Courts are using both the CRPD and the constitution to interpret the rights guaranteed to persons with disabilities in Chapter II. See the cases referred to in supra note 14. 37