NHRC, a dysfunctional body!!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

With the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC) having been disaccredited by the United Nations
Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the second consecutive
year in May 2024, on account of lack of pluralistic balance in
its composition and staff to represent a diverse Indian
society including religious and ethnic minorities and the
UNHRC deferring India’s NHRC accreditation for the second
year in a row, it is now learnt that this decision could now
affect India’s ability to vote at the UNHRC and some United
Nations General Assembly (UNGA) bodies as well. The latest
United States Commission on International Religious
Freedom (USCIRF) report released on October 2, 2024 on
rampant human rights violations and the NHRC’s failure to
intervene to perform its constitutional duties to protect,
defend, preserve and uphold human rights of people of India
indicates its dysfunctional status.

The USCIRF report highlights how throughout 2024,

individuals have been killed, beaten, and lynched by
vigilante groups, religious leaders have been arbitrarily
arrested and homes and places of worship demolished.
These events constitute particularly severe violations of
religious freedom. It describes the use of misinformation
and disinformation, including hate speech, by government
officials to incite violent attacks against minorities. It
describes changes to and enforcement of India’s legal
framework to target and disenfranchise religious minorities,
including the CAA, a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and several
state-level anti-conversions and anti cow-slaughter laws.
The silence and inaction of NHRC on all these as also over
other targeted violence against vulnerable people like

minorities, Dalit, tribal and women prove beyond doubt the
dismal failure of NHRC.

Last year in March 2023, a group of NGOs

approached the Global Alliance of National Human Rights
Institutions (GNHRI), the UN linked body for review of
India’s accreditation of NHRC status on account of NHRC’s
lack of independence, pluralism, diversity and accountability
as contradictory to the UN principles on national
institutions, called “the Paris Principles”. Heeding the NGOs
and other civil society representations, the UNHRC deferred
the NHRC’s reaccreditation by 12 more months after
considering the (NHRC’s) failure to discharge effectively its
mandate to respond to the escalating violation of human
rights in India. The NHRC was also told to improve its
processes and functions. Despite this, NHRC failed to
improve its functioning, leading to second deferral of its
reaccreditation to the UNHRC.

Failure of NHRC to implement the “Paris Principles”
comprised lack of independence in appointment of its
functionaries and its style of functioning. The other
objections included appointment of controversial judge
Justice Arun Mishra following his appointment as Chairman
of NHRC on May 31, 2021despite stiff opposition from
leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha with no leader of
opposition then in the Lok Sabha, in the selection committee,
and the police officials in the NHRC investigating human
rights violations by the State including by the police. This is
a conflict of interest, not independence from government
interference. State’s tyrannical might against the people is
used by the police as a tool of suppression, oppression,
framing of innocents and ostentatious display of arbitrary
abuse of authoritarian power. The RSS Pariwar union
government did not heed any proposal for reforms in NHRC.

In November 2023, seven retired IPS officers were

appointed in NHRC as special monitors to oversee
investigations of human rights’ violations in the country.
One of them accused of corruption in 2018 while working as
special director in CBI, has been entrusted with the tasks to
oversee the areas of terrorism, counter-insurgency,
communal riots and violence. A former director of
Intelligence Bureau has been made a member of NHRC. It is
learnt that all the retired IPS officers in NHRC have been
notorious for their partisan conduct, servile to the RSS
Pariwar union government and its ruled state governments.
It is for the sovereign people to assess how impartial will
they be! India has been repeatedly told of concerns about
the lack of diversity in NHRC and asked to have a pluralistic
balance in its composition of officials, which was never done.
This is because the Prime Minister rants against the
minorities constantly, including in his election campaigning.
The other issues include NHRC’s lack of engagement
with civil society and human rights defenders (activists). In
this connection, the NHRC has been directed to interpret its
mandate in a broad and purposive manner to promote a
progressive definition of human rights to address all human
rights violations ensuring consistent follow-up with the
state authorities. It is worrisome that all those who oppose
the RSS Pariwar government both at the centre and states
for such violence are dubbed “anti-nationals” and
incarcerated under dreaded non-bailable laws. In India,
human rights defenders languish in jail for years without
trial under various non-bailable draconian laws with not a
squeal from the NHRC, which has not taken any concrete
steps to respond to the deteriorating human rights situation
or intervene in a timely manner despite various UN special
rapporteurs calling on the Indian authorities to release these
political prisoners without trial and judiciary by and large
being complicit.

The NHRC has been useless and miserably failed on
Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, communal violence in
Haryana, Uttarakhand and elsewhere besides rampant
demolitions of houses of the minorities, violating their
inherent fundamental right to shelters. The NHRC has lost its
sheen and lost people’s credibility and is down to stay as a
servile organization manned by lackeys out to serve RSS
agenda and not the public interest at large. India enjoying A
rating in human rights status in the UNHRC is in jeopardy
and it may lose voting rights therein and other UN bodies.
Reversing its current inactions and doing right things could
correct this. However, people expect restoration of
accreditation of NHRC to the UNHRC if the NHRC commits
itself to respond to human rights violations by the State.
There were times when the NHRC outshined when
it took a stand before the Supreme Court against the gang-up
of entire state machinery to thwart the course of justice for
complicity of the Gujarat government in the communal riots
in 2002. As a result, major cases were transferred to courts
in Maharashtra where the victims got some justice. But now,
the NHRC has swerved from its mandate to intervene
effectively to punish rampant human rights violations by the
state machinery. NHRC was set up in 1993 by a legislation
enacted by the Parliament to take cognizance, investigate
and punish the human rights violator states and its
machinery to uphold and protect human rights of the people
to let the highest standards of democratic human rights of
the people to let the rule of law based constitutional
democracy flourish in the country in keeping with the
highest standards of democracies in the world as also in
keeping with the Constitution of India’s postulates of justice,
liberty, equality and

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