KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court has ordered the government to publish and freely distribute the Constitution of Nepal in Braille script.

A joint bench of Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Nityananda Pandey ruled that withholding a Braille version violates the fundamental rights and right to information of visually impaired citizens.

Citing the legal maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the petitioners successfully argued that the state must provide equal access to the nation’s guiding document, which had already been translated into various spoken mother tongues but not formatted for the blind.