The Supreme Court on August 11 said the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) acted like a “super Election Commission of India” by appointing “a special human rights observer” to gather information about incidents of violence during the recently concluded panchayat elections in West Bengal.
A Bench headed by Justice B.V. Nagarathna upheld the Calcutta High Court order which quashed the NHRC’s June notification.
The Bench said the supervision and control of panchayat elections was the sole constitutional responsibility of the State Election Commission under Article 243K of the Constitution.
The top court said the NHRC’s “intentions”, by taking suo motu cognisance of media reports about poll violence in West Bengal, may have been good, but the human rights body had no business kickstarting a “parallel” system of supervision and control over the panchayat elections.
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“There were human rights’ violations taking place, that is why the NHRC took suo motu cognisance under Section 12 of the NHRC Act,” senior advocate Maninder Singh, for the human rights body, submitted.
But Justice Nagarathna said the Calcutta High Court had already intervened by that time and passed positive orders to curb the violence besides monitoring the situation.
“It was not a free-for-all situation… NHRC cannot interfere in the exclusive powers given by the Constitution to the State Election Commission and the Election Commission of India… Autonomy of institutions have to be safeguarded… There are places where the NHRC can step in, but it has not done so. It is doing it only in some places… The NHRC cannot become a super Election Commission of India,” Justice Nagarathna observed orally.
In its order, the top court said “the NHRC may have had good intentions to exercise suo motu powers under Section 12 of the NHRC Act here… But the manner in which such powers were exercised were totally in contravention of the salutary provisions of Article 243K of the Constitution”.
In June, the NHRC had decided to depute its Director-General (Investigation) as “Special Human Rights Observer” to get “first hand information” of recent incidents and to conduct an on-the-spot survey of West Bengal in consultation with the State Election Commission to identify the sensitive constituencies where such violence was likely to occur relating to the panchayat polls.
The DG (Investigation) had to submit a comprehensive report to the commission for deployment of “Micro Human Rights Observers” in all the sensitive constituencies during and after the panchayat polls either by engaging the special rapporteurs or special monitors of the commission, with “a solo objective to protect basic human rights”, the NHRC had said.
The NHRC was cut short by the Calcutta High Court.
