Women’s rights panel likely to get more teeth?

A bigger and stronger National Commission for Women to ensure implementation of women-related laws and investigation of complaints is in the offing, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 15, 2010, 24:55:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A bigger and stronger National Commission for Women to ensure implementation of women-related laws and investigation of complaints is in the offing.

As of now, the women rights watchdog has powers of a civil court but cannot investigate complaints or prosecute accused and initiate action against those who refuse to follow NCW orders, thereby rendering it toothless.

This is set to change with Women and Child Development minister Krishna Tirath seeking 24 changes in the NCW Act, 1990, bringing it at par with National Human Rights Commission and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

“Millions of women look up to the institution for day-to-day support. It is very necessary to scale up the institution’s capacity and infrastructure,” Tirath said in a letter written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on February 9. “We need to make NCW vibrant, dynamic body, capable to address women's issues more effectively and intensely.”

The amendment proposed in the NCW Act, once enacted, would change how the commission works. The government also proposes to give NCW power to prosecute a person, against whom evidence of committing a criminal offence against a woman is found. “The amendment will provide succour to women who fail to get justice from existing government institutions,” a ministry official said.

It has also suggested that tenure of the chairperson and members should be for minimum three years. The chairperson would be of the rank of Cabinet Secretary and members of Secretary.

Tirath has sought PM’s approval to appoint Kapila Vatsayan, a Rajya Sabha member, as a head of the committee to consider suggestions to make NCW a “vibrant and a meaningful body”. The ministry also plans to hold a meeting of all former chairpersons and members of NCW and presents members of State Commissions for Women to draw a strategy for making women commissions a powerful body to ensure women emancipation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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