NHRC appointment: Not told that selected member is BJP vice-president, says Ghulam Nabi Azad

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As reported by The Indian Express on Sunday, this is the first time an active politician is being appointed to the post, which has been lying vacant for over two years now.

Khanna’s name was cleared last month by a selection panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which included Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha P J Kurien and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad.

When it was pointed out that Khanna was a Rajya Sabha member till April this year, Azad said: “In the Rajya Sabha, we have so many members who are social workers. We are all social workers… You have lawyers, you have artists, you have all types of people in the Rajya Sabha.”

“But then to be an office-bearer, particularly in the BJP, you need to be a person of a particular ideology. Maybe not as an MP, but to be an office-bearer you need a particular, strong ideology… At least the office-bearer thing was hidden,” said Azad.

“We should have been kept in the loop with full bio-data,” he said. Asked whether he would take up the issue with the government, he said, “let us see… I will definitely contact the government.”

The appointment of an active politician as a member of the NHRC was also mentioned at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee on Monday. AICC general secretary Ambika Soni raised the issue, stating that the government was “subverting institutions” and “indoctrinating” them.

Meanwhile, former Delhi High Court Chief Justice Rajinder Sachar said “the proposed appointment of Khanna, an old-time BJP active member and party vice-president, to the NHRC is a brazen attack on the prestige and standing” of the rights body.

Section 3 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, which deals with the issue of “Constitution of a National Human Rights Commission”, says that only a former Chief Justice of India can be appointed NHRC chairperson. The four full-time members, as per the Act, should include a former judge of the Supreme Court, a former chief justice of a high court and two others “from amongst persons having knowledge of, or practical experience in, matters relating to human rights”.