Over the past few years, human rights in India have been brought under the scanner continually. Violations of basic human rights have been reported from all states of the Nation, and some instances have even attracted the attention of international media like the Anti-CAA protests and Farmers’ Protests of 2021. Against such a backdrop, the role, and efficiency of the premiere Human Rights protection authority in the nation, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), stands questionable indeed.
The NHRC came into existence on the 12th of October 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Act. It acts as a watchdog over human rights violations in the nation. The Commission is set to complete three decades since its formation next year and has quite a few achievements under its belt. Celebrating its 25th Anniversary in the year 2018, the Commission highlighted its list of achievements stating that till that year, it had disposed of more than 17 lakh cases, caused the payment of compensation to victims to the tune of 1 billion rupees, carried out investigations and over 800 spot inquiries into cases of rights violations, and conducted over 200 conferences spreading awareness of the human rights of citizens across the nation. However, such achievements cannot shroud the fact that the Commission has failed to do justice to its constitutional position in our democracy.
While hearing a case on the 2017 Manipur encounter killings, the Apex Court opined that the NHRC has been evidently reduced to a “toothless tiger”. The literature and history of the Commission are fraught with instances of failures and lapses of duty on the part of the Commission. The failures of the NHRC are stark. We should start the discussion with extrajudicial or encounter killings the rates of which have been on the rise over the past few years.
Over the past five years, over 650 encounter killings have been reported across the nation. The burden of such encounters is majorly borne by the state of Uttar Pradesh. Extrajudicial killings are gross violations of the right to life of accused persons. Such killings are meant to be kept in check by the Commission. However, that hasn’t been the case. Going by the 2018 statistics for the state of Uttar Pradesh, over 50 deaths had resulted from encounters from 2017 to 2018. However, the State received only three reports from the NHRC about these killings, which were not resolved by the State government either.
Let’s talk of other areas where violations of Human Rights have been taking place for too long now. In the last few years, India has seen several high-profile protests by different walks of citizens. In December 2019, about 25 protestors were killed in the Anti-CAA demonstrations across the nation. Furthermore, In the 2021 Farmers Protests that spanned almost a year and attracted international attention, over 600 activists were claimed to have lost their lives.
Other protests like the Students’ protests were met with severe pushback from the Government. However, barring a few isolated instances, all of these protests were peaceful and were being carried out in the exercise of the citizen’s right to express and dissent. The NHRC has been, rather uncannily, sitting on the sidelines of all these occurrences. The Commission finally opened up an inquiry into the CAA protests’ killings in December 2021, notices were issued about the farmers’ protests to State governments. Practically, however, not much has been done so far.
If we now focus on the killings of fact-finders in our democracy, the numbers are astonishing indeed. In the decade leading up to 2020, a total of 11 activists had lost their lives in Bihar itself, seeking information and inquiring about corruption in their provinces. In the year 2020, an RTI activist named Pankaj Kumar was brutally shot dead on the river banks of the Sone river in Patna. Last year in August 2021, a journalist who worked for a news agency was kidnapped and murdered in the Champaran district of Patna. Since the Right to Information (RTI) legislation came into existence in 2005, 95 activists have lost their lives and 175 cases of assault against activists have been registered, going by the data presented by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). In December 2021, the NHRC served notices to the Bihar Government about providing protection to such activists.
Apart from these aforementioned areas where lapses have taken place, the NHRC faces severe logistic hindrances too. While the number of complaints is on the rise, the Commission remains severely understaffed. In a 2017 submission before the Supreme Court, the Commission admitted that despite there being a jump of about 1500 percent in the number of complaints in the two decades between 1995 and 2015, the number of members at the NHRC has dipped by over 16 percent.
The existing humongous backlog of cases at the Commission and the perennial shortage of staff make it impossible for the Commission to investigate and dispose of cases quickly, thus making it severely inefficient. A total revampment of the Commission is the need of the hour if it is to do justice to its mandate.
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