Though the Human Rights Commissions have contributed immensely to the protection of human rights in India, yet they have failed to assert themselves against the mighty and powerful. Analyzing their structural and practical limitations, suggest remedial measures.

Contribution that is real

• NHRC fact-finding, spot inquiries, and compensation recommendations have made custodial deaths and encounter killings harder to bury in a district file.
• Interventions on bonded labour, mental hospitals, and prison overcrowding created a public record that courts and the press could use.
• State Human Rights Commissions, where they function, shorten the distance for a poor complainant who will never reach New Delhi.
• Paris Principles-style publicity and annual reports have kept human rights inside the official vocabulary even when governments are impatient.

Structural limitations in the Act

• The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (amended 2006 and 2019) makes NHRC recommendations non-binding; a powerful ministry can note, delay, or dilute them.
• Investigation often depends on police on deputation, so the Commission is structurally shy of indicting the force that staffs it.
• Section 19-type limits on the armed forces — a report-seeking procedure rather than a full independent probe — weaken the Commission precisely where State violence is most insulated.
• The 2019 amendment widened the pool for chairperson and members (no longer only a former Chief Justice of India as chair) and allowed persons from other fields; critics said this could dilute judicial weight even as vacancies were the older disease.
• Jurisdiction over cases older than one year, and a crowded cause list, shut out slow-burning violations that the powerful prefer to wait out.

Practical limitations against the mighty

• Delayed appointments, acting chairs, and understaffed State Commissions make the institution look optional to a Chief Minister or a Union Home ministry.
• Political appointees and post-retirement incentives can blunt inquiry into the government of the day.
• Complainants against large corporations, security laws, or ruling-party cadres face the same recommendatory ceiling: shame without sanction.
• Poor coordination with the National Commission for Women, SC/ST commissions, and the courts produces forum-shopping and dropped files.

Remedial measures

• Give selected NHRC findings — custodial death, proven torture, wilful non-cooperation — a statutory duty to implement within a fixed time, subject to judicial review, so the mighty face more than a letter.
• Build an independent investigation wing of forensic and civilian investigators, not only borrowed police.
• Align the armed-forces procedure with a time-bound, reasoned public order, and let the Commission approach the Supreme Court as of right when the Union stonewalls.
• Fix a six-month rule for filling vacancies, gender and minority diversity on the bench, and financial charge on the Consolidated Fund to protect the budget.
• Recommendation: Paris Principles compliance in law, not only in the annual report — independence of appointment, own investigative capacity, and enforceable follow-up.