India's national human rights institution is failing its responsibilities and should be downgraded

In March 2025, the Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) of the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) recommended downgrading the accreditation of the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRCI). It gave the institution one year to bring its work in line with the Paris Principles, the international standards for national human rights institutions. The NHRCI challenged the recommendation, but GANHRI rejected the challenge in December 2025. The review has since been postponed to November 2026. Ahead of it, ISHR and other organisations have urged the SCA to amend the commission’s current “A” rating to reflect its failure to comply.

Police investigating police

The SCA has repeatedly flagged that the NHRCI relies on police officers seconded from the government to investigate human rights violations, including those committed by police. It has recommended amending the Protection of Human Rights Act accordingly. No legislative change has followed. The Commission has only proposed internal rules that would allow non-police investigators, yet its website still describes an Investigation Division made up solely of police officers.

The consequences of this are demonstrated in the impunity connected with a number of cases including the unfulfilled call by UN Special Rapporteurs in February 2026 for independent inquiries into alarming allegations of hundreds of extrajudicial killings and torture-related deaths, which disproportionately affected Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis.

Appointments without transparency or pluralism

The SCA has stressed that an institution must be, and be seen to be, independent of government. Yet the government continues to appoint a former civil servant as Secretary-General, whose tenure has now been extended three times, most recently in July 2026. Two commissioner posts have been vacant since 2018 and 2021, and the SCA has noted that the commission has only one woman among its members. The selection of the chairperson, made by the President on the recommendation of a committee that includes the Prime Minister, remains opaque, despite SCA calls to publicly advertise vacancies and consult broadly.

Turning away from civil society

The SCA has heard from civil society actors that the NHRCI does not cooperate with them, and that it avoids those critical of its performance. This matters at a time when the government has cancelled the foreign funding licences of 22,493 NGOs under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, a law UN experts say is used to silence organisations whose priorities differ from the government’s. The NHRCI has not spoken out. It also stayed silent on the arrests of five Indigenous human rights defenders in Assam, even after four UN experts urged their release.

Silence in the face of violations

The Commission has taken up more cases on its own initiative, and its media presence has improved. But these changes look cosmetic. Its redesigned website displays large figures on complaints disposed of, with little context, and no longer clearly shows data on deaths in police and judicial custody or alleged extrajudicial killings, which it once published.

Meanwhile, the NHRCI has said little or nothing about:

• the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s August 2026 findings of large-scale violations by law enforcement, including against Dalits, Indigenous Peoples and non-citizens
• the use of counterterrorism law against activists, journalists and students, including in the Bhima Koregaon and Delhi 2020 cases
• the excessive force used against student protesters in New Delhi in July 2026, which injured over 100 people
• the removal of over 60 million names from electoral rolls, and a civil society request for a public hearing that went unanswered
• arbitrary demolitions of Muslim homes, ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in 2024
• violence in Manipur, which has killed over 300 people since May 2023
• the expulsion of ethnic Bengali Muslims and Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh

What should happen next

The NHRCI had a year to act on the SCA’s recommendations and has not. An “A” rating signals to the world that an institution is independent and effective. For the NHRCI, it currently does the opposite, giving credibility to a body that is not protecting those who most need it. ISHR joins other human rights NGOs in urging GANHRI and the SCA to downgrade the NHRCI at its November 2026 review.