Stop political, govt interference in National Human Rights Commission: UN affiliate tells India

Ex-Chief Justice of India, current chairman NHRC HL Dattu (left)

An authoritative report to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) by OHCHR’s affiliate, Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutes (GANHRI), has created flutter by recommending that accreditation to India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) should be deferred till November 2017.
Prepared by GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA), has particularly taken strong exception to politicians and government functionaries as NHRC members, even as referring to the fact that the Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes is a Member of Parliament (MP), and “has voting rights in the full statutory commission.”
The reference here is to PL Punia, member of the Lok Sabha from 2009 to 2014 representing Barabanki Lok Sabha constituency. A Dalit leader of the Congress, as chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes he sits ex-officio on NHRC.
In November last year, a senior BJP leader, former Rajya Sabha member Avinash Rai Khanna, was selected to join as NHRC member. Following national furor over the move, Khanna re-joined BJP and took over as national vice-president, the post he had surrendered in the first week of November join NHRC.
Quoting UN documents, which require a national human rights institute to be “independent from government in its structure, composition, decision-making and method of operation”, the report notes, it must be constituted and empowered to consider and determine the strategic priorities and activities of NHRC “based solely on its determination of the human rights priorities in the country, free from political interference.”
“Government representatives and MPs should not be members of, nor participate in, the decision-making organs of an NHRI”, the report states, adding, their membership of, and participation in, the decision-making body of NHRC has “the potential to impact on the real and perceived independence”.
The report insists, NHRC’s legislation should clearly indicate that government functionaries and politicians “participate only in an advisory capacity”, adding, in order to further promote independence in decision-making, and avoid conflicts of interest, NHRC’s “rules of procedure should establish practices to ensure that such persons are unable to inappropriately influence decision-making.”
The report particularly takes exception to Section 11 of the NHRC Act, which requires that the Central Government to appoint a civil servant with the rank of secretary to take the role of Secretary General of NHRC, and a police officer of the rank of Director General of Police or above to take the post of Director (Investigations).
The report underlines, “The practice of having police officers and former police officers involved in the investigation of human rights violations, particularly in circumstances where the alleged perpetrators are the police. It noted that this practice has adverse implications for the actual and perceived independence of the NHRC.”
Insisting that there should be “broad consultation and/ or participation in the application, screening, selection and appointment process”, the report bemoans, for the last five years, the position of secretary-general of NHRC “has been held by a variety of people and has been vacant for a substantial period of time.”
"As concerns the Director General (Investigation) and the practice of using former police officers to investigate complaints”, the report says, adding, “For victims of abuses by police, there is a real or perceived conflict of interest, and this may impact the ability of such persons to access human rights justice.”
---
Download full report HERE

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog