Brief History

The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities was carved out of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on 12.05.2012 as the Department of Disability Affairs to ensure greater focus on policy matters to effectively address disability issues and to act as a nodal Department for greater coordination among different stakeholders, organizations State/UTs Governments and central Ministries and Departments. Thereafter, the Department was renamed as the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disability to explicitly express the focus of the Department on overall empowerment of PwDs in December, 2014. Subsequently, the name of the Department was further renamed as the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) DEPwD(D) vide notification dated 14.05.2016. In Hindi, the name of the Department is Divyangjan Sashaktikaran Vibhag