It has been two years since S R Nayak resigned as the chairperson
Logo of Karnataka Human rights Commission. (photo: Agencies)
Bengaluru: It’s been a long wait for human rights activists. In 10 months of BJP regime and 15 months of Congress rule, there were three Chief Ministers, and two Deputy Chief Ministers but not a single Karnataka State Human Rights Commission (KSHRC) chairperson.
Instead the government did a shoddy job of appointing Meera Saksena on June 23, 2014 as the acting chairperson. She was initially appointed as a member to the Chairperson.
It has been two years since S R Nayak resigned as the chairperson and still there has not been any effort from the government to make a permanent appointment of the KSHRC chairperson.
After the controversy of the appointment of Darmar Murgeshan as the KSHRC chairperson, human rights activist Narashima Murthy met the CM on many occasions. The CM gave the excuse of lack of candidates and said the search was on.
However, an RTI report has revealed that as of now, 17 Supreme Court judges and 9 chief justices from various courts have retired since 2012 January onwards.
Speaking with Deccan Chronicle, Narashima Murthy says, “So many candidates are available. Then why is the government not taking any initiative in this regard? Meera Saksena is an IAS officer, a bureaucrat and she does not qualify for the post. We need someone who can apply his or her judicial mind. In a short span of time there were so many rape cases, but the acting chairperson, who is a woman, did not visit even one case. Besides, a Chairperson should be person who is, or has been, a Judge of the Supreme Court or who is, or has been, the Chief Justice of a High Court.”
Till May 2014, over 16,000 cases are pending. The human rights activists will submit a petition to the Chief Minister to quash the appointment of Meera Saksena and make a fixed appointment of the chairperson.
The petition has 100 signatures of human right activists like Doreswamy, Girish Karnad, Chandrashekar Patil, G. K. Govind Rao, Dona Fernandes and the like. “A chairperson is important in cases which involve custodial deaths and so on,” concluded Murthy. Let’s hope the government sees the light and quickly appoints one!
( Source : dc )
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