The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday directed the State Government to file an affidavit by August 16 providing a time frame within which it would appoint members to the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) after obtaining recommendations from a high level committee consisting of the Chief Minister, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.
A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and G.R. Swaminathan issued the direction after expressing dissatisfaction over a report filed in the court on Monday without mentioning a time frame.
Recording the submission that the Registrar General of the High Court had also suggested some names for the posts and about 31 individuals too had applied for the posts, the judges said that the members should be appointed to the commission at the earliest.
The judges told a Special Government Pleader that the chairperson alone might not be able to handle the functions of the commission without the assistance of two members.
The observations were made during the hearing of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocate G. Thirumurugan of Ramanathapuram on the basis of a news report titled ‘Seven months on, SHRC still without members’ published in The Hindu on April 6.