AGARTALA, July 27 (TIWN): Supreme Court had recently directed Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Arunchal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura and Nagaland to set up Human Rights Commissions as it noted that Delhi had the second highest number of complaints of human rights violations lodged with the National Human Rights Commission. SC said that it was the legal duty of the state governments to set up state Human Rights Commissions as their absence makes access to justice by the victims of the human rights violation an "illusion". National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) during the year 2013 issued reminder to Tripura government to constitute the State Human Rights Commissions (SHRC) as per the Human Rights Commission Act 2005.Tripura CM Manik Sarkar was asked to set up SHRC at the earliest to deal with complaints related to human rights violations in the state, but in the year 2014 Sarkar said that the Tripura government has no required funds to constitute a full-fledged state human rights commission.

According to the act, the state human rights commission has to be headed by a retired chief justice of a high court or an ex-judge of the Supreme Court," said Sarkar in the assembly earlier in 2014.

Among the eight northeastern states, only Assam, Manipur and Sikkim have human rights commissions.

The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), a rights organisation, has recently written to the new Governor of Tripura Tathagata Roy urging him to persuade the State Government to set up the long awaited Tripura State Human Rights Commission.

In the letter, APDR expressed surprise over the fact that even though the Communist Party of India-Marxist or CPI-M led Left Front Government in Bengal set up the first State Human Rights Commission in the country in 1995, the Left Front Government in Tripura had been inactive in this regard.

"The fact that most if not all the states are affected by ethnic and other violence and extremist activities calling for curbs affecting the people living in those areas resulting, at times, in the violation of their rights cannot be disputed," the court said emphasizing the need for setting SHRCs in northeastern states.

The judgment said, "Such occurrence of violence and the state of affairs prevailing in most of the states cannot support the contention that no such commissions are required in those states as there are no human rights violations of any kind whatsoever.”

The court's directions on a Public Interest Litigation by Calcutta High Court's former judge, Justice D K Basu seeking direction to prevent the violation of human rights.

The court in a slew of directions has directed installing of CCTV cameras in prisons, setting of special human rights courts, positing of at least two woman officers at every police stations and others.