NHRC-SHRC meeting concludes in New Delhi with several meaningful suggestions for strengthening human rights protection mechanism with mutual partnership (07.12.2018)



New Delhi, 7th December, 2018

The Secretary Level Meeting of the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC and State Human Rights Commissions, SHRCs concluded in New Delhi today with several important suggestions to further strengthen areas of cooperation and partnerships.

Earlier, giving an overview of the NHRC’s various functions, Mr. Ambuj Sharma, Secretary General, NHRC said that the aim of the meeting was to share the best practices and explore how the SHRCs and NHRC could collaborate to fill in the gaps in the system for the cause of promotion and promotion of human rights.

Dr. Neeta Verma, DG, NIC Government of India spoke about how the concept of digital India has been put into place with the support of information technology by developing Common Services Centre portal. She appreciated the NHRC India’s initiative to utilize the MyGov and CSC portals for building awareness on human rights and reaching out to the people in far flung areas.

She also launched Human Rights Commission Network Portal, HRCnet developed by the National Informatics Centre with the support of National Human Rights Commission. It aims connecting all the Human Rights Commissions. HRCnet is a web and workflow based portal that integrates the Complaint Redressal applications being used at the National Human Rights Commission and the State Human Rights Commissions. Giving an insight into this portal Mr. Sudhir Chandra Sr. Technical Director, NIC, said that this portal is integrated with Common Service Center's service and now available at district level. Common citizen can lodge complaint without hassles and approach NHRC and SHRC for redressal. It also provides features to facilitate communication with various stakeholders through emails and SMS messages. It also aims to minimize duplicity in case registration. Using this application, government authorities can upload reports online.

The meeting also explored the possibilities of collaboration with the District Legal Services Authority, DLSA, State Legal Services Authority, SLSA, as well as National Legal Services Authority, NLSA for organizing awareness workshops on human rights and related redressal mechanism. Some of the important suggestions were as follows:

The governments should be asked to provide financial resources at the level of police Chowki and police stations as lack of resources also become a reason for human rights violations of in custody people, who require to be provided food etc.

The State police organizations should be requested to replicate the Kerala model for deputing woman police personnel with the victim of sexual assault till the prosecution of the accused.

All custodial deaths may not be due to police torture or apathy hence, these should not be generalized in the data related to custodial deaths in the National Crime Record Bureau.

NHRC may support an empirical research to know the actual number of undertrial prisoners and particularly those, who, due mental problems continued to languish in jails without hearing of their matters to find out a way forward in such cases for delivering justice.

SHRCs should study and recommend the best practices of their respective states towards the protection and promotion of human rights for the consideration of an award by the NHRC to recognize their efforts and promote their replication by other states.

NHRC may also request the concerned sate government on the request of any SHRC to fill the vacancies at various levels and alternatively they can also fill the vacancies of officials with retired officials under prescribed norms after approval from the respective State Government.

Before the discussions started, Dr. Ranjit Singh, Joint Secretary (P&A), gave a presentation on how the support of the technology the Commission was able to fast track the processing of complaints and related data. He also informed about various activities and programmes of the Commission including those organized to celebrate the silver jubilee of the NHRC this year.

Mrs. Sumedha Dwevedi, SSP, Investigation Division, NHRC led by Mr. Gurbachan Singh, DG(I) and Mrs. Chhaya Sharma, DIG (I) gave a presentation on how the enquiries into the issues of human rights violations can help plug in loop holes in the police investigations for resultant reforms.

Mr. Surajit Dey, Registrar (Law), NHRC spoke about providing legal aid through SLS Authorities/NALS authorities on issues like Bonded Labour, Custodial Death etc.

The participants included senior officers from NHRC, SHRCs and National as well as District and State Legal Services Authorities representing different states.

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