Many states including Delhi and Haryana and some Union Territories (UTs) are still to set up State Human Right Commissions (SHRCs) or fill up vacancies of Members and Chairpersons.
Beside Delhi, the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura do not have SHRCs. The other three states which do not have SHRCs are Goa, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
Fifteen states and Union Territories have not set up SHRC Commissions, while the panels existing in nine states have no full time Chairpersons or Members.
According to the documents of NHRC, worst is the case of Himachal Pradesh which is "non-functional" since July 2005 due to non-filling of posts of Chairperson and Members.
Under Section 21 of The Protection of Human Rights Act of 1993, State Human Rights Commissions are required to be constituted by state governments.
According to a senior NHRC official, five of nine state commissions have no full time Chairpersons. Out of the nine, five states — Assam, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Rajasthan —do not even have acting Chairpersons.
Noting that the NHRC can only "persuade" and "not force" state governments, the official said, "We have SHRCs in 20 states but only 11 have full time Chairpersons. We feel that the spirit of the Act has to be replicated in all states."
NHRC statistics says that 2,525 complaints were received at the Commission from Delhi in the past six months since April. "Of these, 534 cases are yet to be disposed off. We are dealing with all the cases," the official said.
In 2010-11, the Commission received 5,929 cases out of which 232 are still pending and the figures for 2009-10 were 5,228 and 54.
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