Protection of Human Rights Act and NHRC (Unit V)

Before 1993, the constitutional courts could already enforce fundamental rights through writ jurisdiction under Articles 32 and 226, but a writ petition depends on someone filing it and produces relief only for that petitioner, not a standing check on how police stations and jails are run day to day.

Parliament passed the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 to add a body that could inquire on its own motion, visit institutions unannounced, and publish findings, sitting alongside the courts rather than replacing them.

For NET purposes, the key idea to fix is the trade-off: the Commission gains speed and reach because it can act suo motu, on a newspaper report or a letter, without a formal complainant. What it gives up in exchange is the power to enforce anything itself. Every inquiry ends in a report, not a judgment.

The NHRC chairperson has, since a 2019 amendment, been drawn from either a former Chief Justice of India or a former Supreme Court judge, replacing the original 1993 rule that restricted the post to a retired Chief Justice alone. Full-time members include some who must have been judges of the Supreme Court or a High Court, plus members chosen for demonstrated human rights experience.

The Act also adds ex officio members: the chairpersons of the National Commissions for Minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Women, Backward Classes, and Protection of Child Rights.

A State Human Rights Commission mirrors this at state level, led by a former Chief Justice or judge of a High Court, but it cannot touch subjects reserved to the Union or a matter already before the NHRC. Removal of a member before term end needs a Supreme Court inquiry into proved misbehaviour or incapacity, the same standard used for removing a sitting judge.

The Act gives the Commission the procedural powers of a civil court trying a suit: summoning and enforcing attendance of witnesses, examining them under oath, requiring discovery of documents, receiving evidence on affidavit, requisitioning public records, and issuing commissions for examining witnesses or documents. A separate and distinctive power lets it visit, without prior notice, any jail or other place of detention to study conditions and recommend improvements.

Two limits matter for objective questions. First, the Commission cannot inquire into a matter once one year has passed from the date of the alleged act. Second, for the armed forces, the Act confines the Commission to seeking a report from the central government and recommending action after reviewing it, rather than the direct summons and on-site inquiry it holds over the police.

For most complaints the Commission does not investigate everything itself; it directs the state government, district magistrate or superintendent of police to investigate and report back, keeping its own investigating team for serious or doubtful cases.

Every power described above ends the same way: a recommendation for prosecution, departmental action, or compensation, not an order. The Act requires the concerned government to inform the Commission of the action taken within a set period, but attaches no penalty for non-compliance beyond the Commission publishing the response, or its absence, in its annual report. This single fact, recommendatory rather than binding authority, is the most exam-tested point on this bullet.

The Act also provides for Human Rights Courts, a Court of Session that a state government may specify, with the concerned High Court's concurrence, for speedier trial of human-rights offences. Few states have notified these courts in practice, and where they exist they often function as an ordinary Sessions Court handling such cases on its regular docket rather than a dedicated forum. NET questions sometimes test this underuse as a fact in its own right.