NHRC to hold public hearing on human rights complaints from 5 NE states

Guwahati, Dec 15 (IANS) The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which concluded its two-day public hearing in Shillong on Wednesday on the complaints related to human rights violations in three northeastern states -- Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura, would began a similar exercise on the grievances relating to the five remaining northeastern states -- Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim and Nagaland, officials said.

Officials in Guwahati said that the NHRC's two-day public hearing to take up the complaints related to human rights violations in the five northeastern states would be held at the Assam Administrative Staff College in Guwahati on Thursday and Friday.

NHRC Chairperson Justice Arun Mishra would inaugurate the session and lead the hearing of the 31 cases pertaining to the five northeastern states.

An official statement said that on Friday, nine cases already in progress before the full commission would be taken up for consideration.

The cases would be heard in the presence of the complainants and the concerned public authorities, so that some decisions are taken on the spot for redressal of grievances of the victims of rights violations.

The Commission would also hold a meeting with NGOs and human rights defenders to ascertain the human rights situation and related issues in these five states.

This will be followed by a meeting with the senior officials of all the five states to discuss the important human rights issues.

NHRC members Justice M.M. Kumar and Rajiv Jain, Secretary General Bimbadhar Pradhan and other senior officers of the Commission and state governments would attend the hearings.

The Commission has been organising ‘open hearing and camp sittings' in different states of the country since 2007, and has so far held more than 41 such sittings and hearings with the objective of quick disposal of cases and to sensitise and create awareness about human rights at the grassroots.

Due to Covid-19 guidelines and restrictions, the Commission could not hold any open hearing after Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in February 2020, but with the improvement in the Covid situation, it restarted the process with the two-day sitting in Shillong for the three northeastern states of Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura, which ended on Wednesday.