Democracy is an illusion if common people’s rights are not protected,” said National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairperson and former Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan here on Thursday.
Inaugurating a two-day national seminar on ‘Judiciary, Democracy and Tradition: An Evaluation with Special Reference to Human Rights’ jointly organised by the NHRC and the Utkal University, Justice Balakrishnan said the country should protect values of its democracy first to ensure protection of socioeconomic, cultural and political rights of its people.
Due to enforcement of law and judicial activism, he said, several kinds of violations human rights have been stopped. Still, the country needs to amend its laws to make services more people-friendly, he observed.
“We are getting complaints relating to human rights violations from Odisha especially from displaced people. We mostly get cases from people belonging to KBK region,” said the NHRC chairperson, adding, “The commission is dealing with it.”
NHRC Joint Secretary Dr Ranjit Singh said the seminar spread over three academic sessions is a golden opportunity for human rights activists and social workers to participate, discuss and learn about various issues linked to the contemporary legal discourse on the emerging domain of human values, customs and rights under the country’s democratic and institutional structures.
NHRC Assistant Director Dr Saroj Kumar Shukla and Assistant Registrar Mukesh Kumar noted writer Prof Nand Kishore Acharya from IIIT Hyderabad and Utkal University Vice-Chancellor Prof Ashok Kumar Das also spoke at the inaugural ceremony of the seminar. Around 400 participants from among academia, judiciary, administration, civil society and students from different colleges are attending the seminar.