Critical Perspectives on the National Human Rights Commission’s Efficacy in India

India’s National Human Rights Commission was set up in 1993 with a clear mandate: to be the country’s foremost watchdog against human rights violations. Established under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, the NHRC was meant to investigate complaints, recommend remedies, and hold state actors accountable. But how has it performed when confronted with some of the most egregious cases of state-sponsored or state-tolerated abuse? Two case studies – the Joint Special Task Force (JSTF) operations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and the Salwa Judum militia in Chhattisgarh – offer a sobering answer. Together, they expose a pattern of delay, procedural timidity, and a troubling proximity to state power that has drawn sharp criticism from civil society and international bodies alike.

The NHRC and the Joint Special Task Force: a decade of delays 🔗

In the late 1990s, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka jointly established a Special Task Force to apprehend the forest brigand Veerappan. What followed, according to widespread complaints from tribals and villagers in the region, was a campaign of torture, illegal detention, and harassment directed at civilians suspected of sheltering or sympathising with Veerappan. NGOs and individuals filed numerous petitions before the NHRC, which in June 1999 decided to constitute a panel to examine the allegations.

The panel – the Justice A.J. Sadashiva Panel – comprised a former Karnataka High Court judge and a former CBI director. It was a credible enough body on paper. But the timeline of what followed reveals the NHRC’s most persistent failing: procedural slowness in the face of serious violations. The Sadashiva Panel, constituted on 28 June 1999, only submitted its report to the Commission on 2 December 2003 – more than four years after it was set up.

After receiving the report, the NHRC forwarded it to the state governments for their comments. And then more delays set in. By February 2005, the Commission had to issue reminders to both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka asking them to send their comments “urgently,” but the state governments failed to comply even by March 2005, at which point the NHRC recorded that it was expressing “serious concern” over the long delay and granted a final opportunity to respond within six weeks. The NHRC threatened to exercise its powers under Section 13 of the Protection of Human Rights Act – but the threat alone should not have been necessary at this stage, given that years had already elapsed.

The practical outcome for victims was grim. As of 2013, more than 1,000 victims of human rights violations had yet to be addressed, despite the NHRC’s interim order of January 15, 2007, which had recommended compensation for 89 victims of atrocities committed by the STF in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Civil society organisations like SICHREM petitioned the NHRC to issue a final order, requesting not just compensation but criminal prosecution of erring officers and withdrawal of gallantry awards given to STF personnel.

What made the situation more galling was what happened to the very officers who had overseen the STF operations. Rather than facing accountability, police personnel from both states were promoted and given cash awards. One officer, Shankar Bidari – who had served as the commanding officer of the STF during the period when the atrocities were committed – was appointed as the Director General and Inspector General of Police of Karnataka. His appointment was later challenged and set aside by the Central Administrative Tribunal, but the fact that it was made at all underscored the yawning gap between NHRC recommendations and real-world accountability.

Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh: a compromised fact-finding exercise 🔗

Salwa Judum was a state-supported vigilante campaign launched in Chhattisgarh in 2005, ostensibly to counter Maoist (Naxalite) insurgents. Armed by the state and backed by security forces, Salwa Judum members carried out raids on villages, torched homes, displaced thousands of tribal families, and were implicated in killings and rapes. Even though some officials acknowledged that Salwa Judum’s activities had exacerbated violence and resulted in loss of civilian life and property, the central and Chhattisgarh state governments failed to prevent or stop these abuses or hold those responsible accountable.

The NHRC’s involvement came about not through its own initiative but at the direction of the Supreme Court. On April 15, 2008, the Supreme Court asked the NHRC to form an inquiry committee into human rights violations by the Salwa Judum and submit a report within eight weeks. This alone is telling – the country’s premier human rights body had not taken suo motu cognisance of a situation that NGOs, academics, and journalists had been documenting extensively for three years.

When the NHRC did form its fact-finding committee, the composition of that committee became a source of serious criticism. The “appropriate fact-finding committee” that the NHRC appointed comprised entirely of police personnel drawn from its investigation wing. Sending police officers to investigate alleged police and paramilitary-backed atrocities was, for many observers, a structural contradiction that compromised the exercise from the outset.

What the NHRC’s own investigation revealed – and missed 🔗

The NHRC’s fact-finding report, submitted to the Supreme Court in sealed cover in August 2008, did identify evidence of Salwa Judum’s excesses. The report was highly critical of the Salwa Judum activists’ conduct and the human rights violations they had perpetrated, and the Supreme Court agreed with these findings, reiterating its disapproval of the state arming private citizens.

But critics pointed out significant gaps in how the investigation was conducted. Scholar Nandini Sundar – who was herself a petitioner in the Supreme Court case – documented how the NHRC team uncritically accepted the government’s version of events in several specific incidents, particularly concerning deaths attributed to Naxalites versus those committed by Salwa Judum or security forces. In case after case, compensation was given only to victims of Naxalite killings and not to victims of Salwa Judum, SPO, or security force killings, which influenced the factual record.

There were also serious concerns about witness safety. Tribal people who had fled Chhattisgarh to Andhra Pradesh and had come to testify before the NHRC were detained and harassed at the Konta Police Station on their way back, raising fears that villagers inside Chhattisgarh might also face retaliation for cooperating with the commission.

And despite the NHRC’s own recommendations, the state government largely refused to comply. Despite NHRC recommendations in 2008 and repeated Supreme Court directions, the Chhattisgarh government did not compensate the thousands of villagers whose homes were burnt by Salwa Judum, nor did it prosecute those responsible for rapes and murders. The Supreme Court eventually declared Salwa Judum unconstitutional in July 2011, but the NHRC’s role in arriving at that outcome was more passive than proactive.

Years later, the NHRC’s own orders in 2017 confirmed what activists had long argued. In an order dated October 26, 2017, the NHRC held government officials guilty of “deliberately turning a blind eye to the killings and incidents of arson” in Sukma district during the years Salwa Judum was active, and concluded that the state’s investigation had been a “cover-up operation.” It had taken over a decade for the commission to reach this conclusion in a case first brought to it in 2013 – itself a case rooted in 2006-07 events.

Structural limitations that these cases expose 🔗

These two case studies are not anomalies – they reflect structural deficiencies that critics have consistently highlighted about the NHRC.

Dependence on state machinery for investigations 🔗

One of the most fundamental problems is that the NHRC relies on police officers seconded from government for its investigative work. The NHRC has no independent investigating officers – police officials are sent on deputation to work for the commission, creating an unnecessary dependence that hinders independent functioning. When the very violations being investigated involve police conduct, this is not merely a procedural inconvenience – it is a structural conflict of interest. This concern is not merely academic: the GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation has consistently flagged since 2011 that the NHRC’s continued reliance on police-staffed investigation teams creates an inherent conflict of interest, particularly when allegations involve police excesses, custodial torture, extrajudicial killings, or counter-terror operations.

Non-binding recommendations and the accountability gap 🔗

The NHRC’s powers are recommendatory, not binding. It can direct state governments to pay compensation, recommend prosecutions, or ask for action taken reports – but it cannot compel compliance. In the JSTF case, compensation was recommended in 2007, yet victims were still uncompensated years later. In the Salwa Judum case, the NHRC’s 2008 recommendations were largely ignored by the state. This is not simply a failure of political will on the part of state governments; it is an inherent limitation baked into the NHRC’s statutory design under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.

The one-year time limitation 🔗

The NHRC can only take up complaints relating to incidents that occurred within one year of the complaint being filed. This time limit restricts the commission’s jurisdiction and prevents it from addressing older violations, even when victims face practical barriers – such as fear of retaliation or lack of legal access – that may have prevented earlier complaints. In conflict zones like Bastar or the JSTF-affected areas, these barriers are not hypothetical; they are the lived reality of victims.

Political interference in appointments 🔗

Both case studies involved situations where the NHRC needed to push back against powerful state governments. The commission’s capacity to do so is constrained by the nature of its appointment process. The GANHRI-SCA deferred the NHRC’s accreditation citing its failure to effectively discharge its mandate, lack of pluralism in selection and appointment of its chairperson and other members, insufficient cooperation with human rights bodies, and concerns over its ability to function independent of government interference.

On December 1, 2025, GANHRI upheld its decision to downgrade the NHRC’s accreditation status – a move it described as the culmination of years of repeated warnings, deferrals, and recommendations pointing to deep structural and functional deficiencies that prevent the NHRC from full compliance with the Paris Principles. This is a significant international rebuke, with direct consequences: the deferral could affect India’s ability to vote at the Human Rights Council and some UNGA bodies.

What does genuine NHRI efficacy look like? 🔗

The Paris Principles, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1993, set the global benchmark for national human rights institutions. They require independence from government, a broad mandate, adequate investigative powers, pluralistic composition, and sufficient resources. India’s NHRC was established in conformity with these principles – but as the cases above demonstrate, formal compliance is a different matter from substantive compliance.

Effective NHRIs in other democracies demonstrate what is possible: independent investigation cadres, transparent appointment processes, robust civil society engagement, and the political credibility to name and shame state actors without fear of institutional reprisal. India’s NHRC has shown it can do this in some cases – its recognition of fake encounter killings in Andhra Pradesh and its 2017 Salwa Judum ruling against the Chhattisgarh government are examples of genuine accountability work. But these instances are too often the exception.

Reform proposals in circulation include making the NHRC a constitutional body (as in South Africa), requiring the government to table action taken reports in Parliament in response to NHRC recommendations, establishing an independent investigation cadre free from police deputation, and broadening the one-year complaint limitation. The Protection of Human Rights Act should be amended to allow the independent appointment of qualified persons for investigative positions in line with the Paris Principles, and regular, constructive engagement with civil society must be institutionalised.

The JSTF and Salwa Judum cases are not merely historical footnotes. They represent a recurring pattern: the NHRC is invoked, investigations are initiated, recommendations are made – and then state governments ignore them, officers are promoted instead of prosecuted, and victims wait years for relief that may never fully arrive. The commission’s value as a rights institution depends not just on what it says, but on whether its words carry consequence.

What do you think? When a national human rights body’s recommendations are routinely ignored by the very governments it is supposed to hold accountable, does the institution still serve its core purpose – or does it inadvertently provide cover for state inaction by creating a perception of oversight without its substance? And given that the NHRC’s investigative staff are drawn from the police, is it structurally possible for it to conduct genuinely independent inquiries into police and paramilitary excesses?

References

1. https://nhrc.nic.in/about-us/nhrc-at-a-glance
2. https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/07/14/being-neutral-our-biggest-crime/government-vigilante-and-naxalite-abuses-indias
3. https://nhrc.nic.in/protection-human-rights-act-1993
4. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/principles-relating-status-national-institutions-paris-principles