A law in place for the last 23 years that denied Delhi and other Union Territories the right to set up their own human rights commission is on its way out.
The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that it intends to amend The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, by which other than States, even union territories will be allowed to set up independent human rights panel to deal with complaints of human rights violation.
The statement was made by Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar while responding to a contempt petition in Supreme Court on Monday. The Court had directed Centre on July 24, 2015 to set up human rights commission (HRC) in Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland within six months.
With regard to States, the Centre had no difficulty but the bone of contention was Delhi. Kumar told the Court that Delhi is a Union Territory and due to this reason, Delhi cannot have its own HRC. While the Delhi Government forwarded request for setting up Delhi HRC, the proposal was blocked by Centre citing the legal hurdle. The bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur and Justice UU lalit told Kumar that Delhi was a state for all other purpose than law and order and land. Kumar showed a 1997 ruling by a Constitution Bench of Supreme Court laying down that Delhi was a UT and not State.
The bench said, “Till date you have not filed a review against our order (of July 2015). We are not on the legislative power of UTs. All we want to know is that should not UTs have a HRC… Are UTs so utopian that there are no human rights violationsIJ”
Kumar informed Court that under the prevailing practice complaints of human rights in UTs were dealt with by NHRC. The bench replied, “You consider people of Daman and Diu, Andaman and Nicobar and Puducherry to travel all the way to Delhi to file human rights complaints. We can understand that some States cannot afford to have a HRC and you provide one that is common to two States but you cannot create islands with regard to human rights violation.” The Court directed Centre to file its response on the matter by April 29, the next date of hearing.