The USCIRF report highlights how throughout 2024, individuals have been killed, beaten, and lynched by vigilante groups, religious leaders have been arbitrarily arrested and homes and places of worship demolished. These events constitute particularly severe violations of religious freedom. It describes the use of misinformation and disinformation, including hate speech, by government officials to incite violent attacks against minorities. It describes changes to and enforcement of India’s legal framework to target and disenfranchise religious minorities, including the CAA, a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and several state-level anti-conversions and anti cow-slaughter laws. The silence and inaction of NHRC on all these as also over other targeted violence against vulnerable people like minorities, Dalit, tribal and women prove beyond doubt the dismal failure of NHRC.

Last year in March 2023, a group of NGOs approached the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GNHRI), the UN linked body for review of India’s accreditation of NHRC status on account of NHRC’s lack of independence, pluralism, diversity and accountability as contradictory to the UN principles on national institutions, called “the Paris Principles”. Heeding the NGOs and other civil society representations, the UNHRC deferred the NHRC’s reaccreditation by 12 more months after considering the (NHRC’s) failure to discharge effectively its mandate to respond to the escalating violation of human rights in India. The NHRC was also told to improve its processes and functions. Despite this, NHRC failed to improve its functioning, leading to second deferral of its reaccreditation to the UNHRC.

Failure of NHRC to implement the “Paris Principles” comprised lack of independence in appointment of its functionaries and its style of functioning. The other objections included appointment of controversial judge Justice Arun Mishra following his appointment as Chairman of NHRC on May 31, 2021despite stiff opposition from leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha with no leader of opposition then in the Lok Sabha, in the selection committee, and the police officials in the NHRC investigating human rights violations by the State including by the police. This is a conflict of interest, not independence from government interference. State’s tyrannical might against the people is used by the police as a tool of suppression, oppression, framing of innocents and ostentatious display of arbitrary abuse of authoritarian power. The RSS Pariwar union government did not heed any proposal for reforms in NHRC.

In November 2023, seven retired IPS officers were appointed in NHRC as special monitors to oversee investigations of human rights’ violations in the country. One of them accused of corruption in 2018 while working as special director in CBI, has been entrusted with the tasks to oversee the areas of terrorism, counter-insurgency, communal riots and violence. A former director of Intelligence Bureau has been made a member of NHRC. It is learnt that all the retired IPS officers in NHRC have been notorious for their partisan conduct, servile to the RSS Pariwar union government and its ruled state governments. It is for the sovereign people to assess how impartial will they be! India has been repeatedly told of concerns about the lack of diversity in NHRC and asked to have a pluralistic balance in its composition of officials, which was never done. This is because the Prime Minister rants against the minorities constantly, including in his election campaigning.

The other issues include NHRC’s lack of engagement with civil society and human rights defenders (activists). In this connection, the NHRC has been directed to interpret its mandate in a broad and purposive manner to promote a progressive definition of human rights to address all human rights violations ensuring consistent follow-up with the state authorities. It is worrisome that all those who oppose the RSS Pariwar government both at the centre and states for such violence are dubbed “anti-nationals” and incarcerated under dreaded non-bailable laws. In India, human rights defenders languish in jail for years without trial under various non-bailable draconian laws with not a squeal from the NHRC, which has not taken any concrete steps to respond to the deteriorating human rights situation or intervene in a timely manner despite various UN special rapporteurs calling on the Indian authorities to release these political prisoners without trial and judiciary by and large being complicit.

The NHRC has been useless and miserably failed on Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, communal violence in Haryana, Uttarakhand and elsewhere besides rampant demolitions of houses of the minorities, violating their inherent fundamental right to shelters. The NHRC has lost its sheen and lost people’s credibility and is down to stay as a servile organization manned by lackeys out to serve RSS agenda and not the public interest at large. India enjoying A rating in human rights status in the UNHRC is in jeopardy and it may lose voting rights therein and other UN bodies. Reversing its current inactions and doing right things could correct this. However, people expect restoration of accreditation of NHRC to the UNHRC if the NHRC commits itself to respond to human rights violations by the State.

There were times when the NHRC outshined when it took a stand before the Supreme Court against the gang-up of entire state machinery to thwart the course of justice for complicity of the Gujarat government in the communal riots in 2002. As a result, major cases were transferred to courts in Maharashtra where the victims got some justice. But now, the NHRC has swerved from its mandate to intervene effectively to punish rampant human rights violations by the state machinery. NHRC was set up in 1993 by a legislation enacted by the Parliament to take cognizance, investigate and punish the human rights violator states and its machinery to uphold and protect human rights of the people to let the highest standards of democratic human rights of the people to let the rule of law based constitutional democracy flourish in the country in keeping with the highest standards of democracies in the world as also in keeping with the Constitution of India’s postulates of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity!