As the acting chairperson and lone member Justice B K Mishra retired on Thursday, the Odisha Human Rights Commission has no human face to represent it now. Functioning without a chairperson for the past six years, the rights watchdog till recently had only single member, B.K. Mishra.
Justice Mishra has been serving as the only member of the commission since 2015. Justice Mishra was struggling to clear the backlog as the number of cases being filed annually had touched an average 5,000 and he had to handle more than dozen cases every day.
According to Mr. Kanungo, the OHRC had not been taking human rights violation cases suo motu since there was only one functional member in the commission. “After the term of Justice Mishra came to an end, the OHRC has become defunct. The sooner the government fills up the three posts, the better it will be for the commission to address complaints related to rights violation.”
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As per the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, the state commission must consist of a chairperson, who has been a chief justice of a high court; one member who is or has been a judge of a high court or district judge in the state and another member is to be appointed from among persons having knowledge of, or practical experience in matters relating to human rights.
Responding over the issue, Congress leader Narasingha Mishra said that he had raised the alarming the issue several times earlier in the Assembly, and had even written a letter to CM but not received any reply.
