THE UNTHINKABLE HAS FINALLY HAPPENED. On April 23, 2025, India’s National Human Rights Commission (‘NHRC’) — was officially downgraded from an A to a B status by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (‘GANHRI’), the international body which gives accreditation to the National Human Rights Institutions globally. The Indian NHRC will now share its B grade with the National Human Rights Institutions of countries like Bangladesh, Libya, Bahrain and Turkey.
In simple terms, this means the NHRC of India, cannot speak, submit documents officially, or vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council when the recommendation becomes final. Its participation will be very limited — more like an observer without active rights; a mighty blow for a nation that likes to see itself as a global defender of democracy and rights.
This decision will not come as a surprise to most Indians. To the average Indian citizen, the National Human Rights Commission has long seemed like a toothless tiger offering little hope for timely justice for citizens whose rights are violated.
Human rights activists who have engaged with the NHRC say that they have observed a major decline in recent years, largely during the tenure of previous Chairpersons like former Justices H.L. Dattu and Arun Mishra, although the fall in standards commenced much earlier.
They allege that the institution has withered into little more than a government mouthpiece—silent on issues of civil liberties, freedom of expression, minority rights, issuing delayed orders, rarely delivering justice to victims, and failing to punish officials or even command respect from the authorities it is meant to hold accountable.
Incidentally, the NHRC of India was established in 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Act (PHRA), as an independent watchdog, free from government influence, acting as a protector of the rights of all citizens. It is looked up to as a leader by over nine other National Human Rights Institutions and 160 State Human Rights Institutions. Yet today, the NHRC seems to view itself as an arm of the government.
The decline of the Indian NHRC has not gone unnoticed by the international community either. In 2016, the NHRC's A-grade accreditation was deferred by GANHRI’s Sub-Committee on Accreditation (‘SCA’) for the first time. In 2023, the SCA deferred accreditation of NHRC for the second time, citing the NHRC’s failure to fulfill its mandate amid rising human rights violations, lacking transparency or independence, lack of pluralism in selection and appointment of its members, and poor cooperation with civil society.
In 2024, the deferment was repeated while GANHRI urged the NHRC to align its functioning with the UN's Paris Principles, which set global standards for national human rights institutions. However, despite two years of successive deferment, the NHRC — and by extension, the Indian government — failed to make any meaningful reforms in the Commission.
The loss of independence of NHRC has been captured by a very indicting paragraph of report –
“The SCA also notes attempts by the Indian national authorities to engage members of the SCA relative to the accreditation process of the NCHR, including the involvement of various foreign missions. The SCA emphasizes that the GANHRI accreditation system is a peer review mechanism which requires NHRIs to maintain their independence”
Though the NHRC registered 4,17,005 human rights complaints between 2020 and 2025, very few of the cases relating to civil liberties, freedom of expression, violations of the rights of minorities or human rights activists were given strong orders by the Commission.
The All India Network of NGOs and Individuals working with National and State Human Rights Institutions (AiNNI) reviewed NHRC’s monthly newsletters from 2023 and 2024, reporting that while the Commission registered 302 custodial deaths, 4,220 deaths in judicial custody, and 203 deaths in police encounters, it recommended compensation in just 60 custodial deaths, 267 deaths in judicial custody, and 2 cases of police encounters. These dismally low rates expose serious shortcomings in delivering justice to victims and their families.
The Commission’s non-initiative has been most glaring in Manipur, where gross human rights violations have taken place since May 2023. Despite the killing of over two hundred people and the displacement of nearly 60,000, as well as extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, destruction of home and torture, the NHRC failed to initiate a spot inquiry or send its investigation division to Manipur until the Chief Justice of India and the Supreme Court intervened on July 19, 2023, setting up a Commission of Inquiry. The Supreme Court did not invite the NHRC chairperson or any of its members to be a part of the Inquiry Commission. The NHRC thereafter registered twenty five cases of alleged human rights violations in Manipur and recommended them for compensation.
In Jammu & Kashmir, the NHRC kept silent about the abrogation of Article 370 wherein the J&K State Human Rights Commission ceased to exist and 1,164 cases pending before it were transferred to the NHRC. According to reports only four cases were investigated and the fate of the rest is unknown.
The NHRC continued to be a mute spectator during the early release of the rapists of Bilkis Bano by the Gujarat government taken up by the Supreme Court; the bulldozer demolitions targeting minorities; the caste-based segregation in the prisons which was brought up in the SC and 100s of extrajudicial killings by counterinsurgency forces in the state of Chhattisgarh, and cases of activists like Father Stan Swamy, Prof Saibaba who died due to state negligence. That NHRC chose not to intervene before the Supreme Court, points out its own legal understanding on the issue.
One of the NHRC’s fundamental flaws is that its investigative division, indicated as primary concern in the report, is only composed of serving police officers, raising serious concerns about bias, conflict of interest, and its ability to independently probe human rights violations.
The Sub Committee also recommended that the leadership of the NHRC be pluralistic in its staff ensuring the diversity of the Indian society including minorities. Yet three out of five current members including the Chairperson are males, with one female member, and no minorities or members of the civil society among them.
One of the major concerns regarding the NHRC has been its lack of meaningful engagement with Indian civil society and human rights organisations in India, restricting itself to the NGOs which are supportive or uncritical of the government policies.
In November 2024, NHRC organised an ITEC training in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs when the Commission did not have a chairperson and four members. When NHRC was suffering two successive deferrals, instead of preparing themselves to upgrade NHRC they tried to conduct this program and continue doing so under the new Chairperson former Justice V. Ramasubramanian in February 2025. NHRC did not prepare itself adequately for this deferral because recommendations were almost repetitive from 2011 onwards.
The NHRC has tried since 2023 to improve its standing by filling in vacancies in its membership, including a woman member, holding limited interactions with the civil society, but the changes have been superficial.
The positions of the Chairperson and members which had been lying vacant nearly for 6 months were filled just three days before the submission of NHRC’s report to GANHRI. The NHRC hosted the Biannual Conference of Asian Pacific Forum in September 2023 and organised a major side event during the GANHRI meeting in Geneva in March 2024. Little effort was made to tackle the deep rooted problems.
The chances of India's NHRC regaining its A status look slim in the future too. For this, it must confront the deep-rooted flaws that have rendered it a weak defender of citizens' rights, instead of hiding behind superficial reforms and cosmetic image-building.
The downgrading of India’s NHRC is not just an international embarrassment — it is another grim reminder of how far our institutions have fallen.
