A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed before the Bombay High Court seeking directions from the court to the Maharashtra government to fill all vacant posts in the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission.
The plea has been filed by advocate Vaishnavi Gholave (23) through advocate Vinod Sangvikar. The PIL said that on March 6, 2001, the Commission was constituted, and it consisted of one chairman, one judicial member, one expert member, one secretary, and one special inspector general of police.
“There have been no regular appointments from July 2018. On April 27, 2021, the acting chairperson, the only adjudicating member, retired,” it said.
On May 25, 2021, Ms. Gholave filed a Right to Information query seeking details on the vacant posts in the Commission.
On May 28, she received a response that said, “Out of the total sanctioned 51 posts, only 26 posts are filled, and the rest 25 are vacant. All three adjudicatory members’ posts are lying vacant, and the post of chairperson has been vacant for more than three years.”
The PIL said, “The Commission has 21,545 pending cases till March 2021, which is the highest in a decade and the inaction of the State government is only to be blamed for this sorry state of affairs. As per the information gathered, only 433 cases have been disposed of this year, due to non-availability of regular chairperson and expert member which led to the entire load being handled by a single judicial member in addition to discharging administrative and other functions.”
Ms. Gholave has also emailed the Chief Minister, the Governor, and other authorities concerned in this regard.
The matter is expected to be heard in the coming week.
