Change without reform | The Indian Express

Change without reform | The Indian Express

Written by Tahir Mahmood |Updated: July 30, 2019 1:34:04 am

The writer is distinguished jurist chair and professor of eminence, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Amity University.

Change without reform

Cleared by Parliament, the Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Bill 2019 does not further empower the NHRC, ignores need for structural changes.

In the coming years, the NHRC’s functioning and performance earned censorious critiques. (Illustration by Suvajit Dey)

A former chief justice of the apex court and one of its judges, a retired high court chief justice, two non-judge dignitaries, and heads of national commissions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, minorities, and women. This high-ranking eight-member group was assembled in September 1993 by the then Congress government to form a new parastatal entity to be known as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). A bill enabling the government to establish such a body had been moved in Parliament three months earlier but could not be passed due to the severe criticism of its flawed provisions within and outside the House. In view of the approaching 45th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the government then hastened to constitute the proposed commission through an ordinance. Early in the next year, the ordinance issued for the purpose was transformed verbatim into the new commission’s statutory charter.