BJP VP may not take up NHRC assignment

Appointment of ruling BJP's vice president Avinash Rai Khanna as a member of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is uncertain as the Punjab politician seems not so keen to take up the "non-political" assignment.
"Khanna is an active politician and we are not sure whether he will actually take up the membership of the NHRC," a senior official said when asked about the concerns raised by some people over appointment of a politician as NHRC member.
Khanna's name for appointment as a member of NHRC was cleared by a high-level selection panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October.

The government is also looking into the concerns raised over the move to appoint Khanna as NHRC member.
The opposition Congress and other political parties have threatened to raise the matter in the ongoing session of Parliament if the appointment is finalised.
A young student from Noida has also moved the Supreme Court, challenging the validity of the recommendation by the high level panel to appoint Khanna to the post.

The selection panel comprises of the Lok Sabha Speaker, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, Union Home Minister, Leaders of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha with the Prime Minister as its head.

As per Section 3 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, which deals with the issue of "constitution of a National Human Rights Commission", the four full-time members 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".
After his Lok Sabha constituency of Hoshiarpur became a reserved seat, Khanna did not contest the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
Later, Punjab's Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP government appointed him as a member of State Human Rights Commission. However, Khanna quit that post after about 13 months, when he was elected to Rajya Sabha.

When BJP was in the opposition, the party had favoured appointing persons of impeccable credentials to such posts. In 2013, the then Leaders of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, respectively, had opposed the move to appoint former Supreme Court judge Cyriac Joseph as a member of NHRC claiming that there was an adverse intelligence report against him.
However, most of the other members, including the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the objection and cleared the appointment.
BJP had also opposed the then UPA government's move to appoint former chief of National Investigation Agency S C Sinha as member of NHRC as he had allegedly pursued the terror cases against right-wing outfits.

However, in case of Khanna, there was no dissent in the selection panel, the sources said.