CHENNAI: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is not a toothless tiger. It has powers equivalent to those of a civil court, NHRC chairperson V Ramasubramanian said on Monday.He was replying to a question during the inaugural session of the 13th edition of the ThinkEdu conclave 2025 when he said, “We have the power to summon and enforce the attendance of witnesses. We have the power to record evidence if somebody does not turn up, we can follow the same steps as a civil court can enforce attendance. Therefore, it is not a toothless tiger.” The inaugural session of the ThinkEdu was on the theme ‘Where India meets Bharat.’Ramasubramanian strongly objected to the reason given by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) for deferring accreditation to NHRC.Speaking on the topic ‘Balancing the Scales: Rights, Duties and the Indian Soul,’ moderated by Dinamani Editor Vaidyanathan. Ramasubramanian said GANHRI, the apex certification body of all national human rights institutions, has deferred NHRC’s accreditation for the last two years on the grounds that it has not been constituted as per the Paris Principles, 1993. “I think there is a fundamental flaw in their argument. If you have to assess an institution and give accreditation, you must assess its performance and not its DNA,” said the chairperson of NHRC.He further added, “If you assess the performance of NHRC and say that it is not up to the standard, we do not give you accreditation, I agree. But if you say that there is a congenital deformity in the way you are born, then I think it’s not about the accreditation of NHRC, but it is an accreditation of the government.”Ramasubramanian agreed that the delay in granting global accreditation to NHRC is one of the major challenges for the organisation he took over as chairperson more than a month ago, but he is taking steps to resolve it.He said that another challenge is enforcing human rights in a diverse country like India, which has people practicing more than eight major religions worldwide, divided by 1,640 castes and communities, speaking more than 22 official languages, and having different ethnicities.
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