Mr. Banal-krishnan and clean cheating

Just before two years NHRC ranked Gujarat as the third worst among all states in terms of human violations. And now, Mr. Banal-krishnan gives clean chit to Gujarat government. Here is the report of Indian Express, 20 March, 2009:

State commission refutes findings

The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has refused to accept the National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC’s) report, which has ranked Gujarat as the third worst among all states in terms of human rights violations.

SHRC Secretary Dr R L Meena said the body will not accept this report.

According to the NHRC report, Gujarat accounted for 3,813 complaints of human rights violation of the total of 94,559 cases from across the country, which is less than only Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

Meena, however, expressed doubt over the source of the data and the details of the NHRC report. “I don’t believe that Gujarat stands third in terms of human rights violations. I will challenge anyone on this,” he said.

Meena said the SHRC and the NHRC deals with many different issues and there is a possibility of a lot of overlapping of cases, “due to which a same case can be registered with both commissions and that too more than once”.

Besides, many cases indicated in the applications could be false as well, he said. The SHRC Secretary also stressed on the definition of human rights violation as indicated in the ‘Human Rights Violation Act, 1993.

He said the SHRC considered a violation only when it was done by some authority. A person could approach alternative authorities named in the Act, he added.

“A person is required to approach the Human Rights Commission only after the regular system has denied justice. But people generally tend to use the SHRC as a shortcut by filing applications directly. We are in fact fair and more welcoming, and entertain each application, which explains why Gujarat has such a high number of applications,” he said.

The high number of complaints in the state is the result of a more people-friendly SHRC, he added.

He further said the number of applications is no criteria to judge the number of violations.

The total number of applications may include premature cases, false applications, as well as actual cases of violations, and a better way to look at it would be from the number of cases dismissed. Even as this year’s statistics are being compiled, last year’s annual report (2006-2007) indicated a total of 610 cases, he said.

“Of a total of 610 cases, we were able to dismiss 419 by 2007-end while 80 cases are being heard in the courts. The dismissal rate with only four dealing hands at our disposal is quiet satisfactory,” Meena added.