State Human Rights Commission: Composition and Jurisdiction Against the NHRC

The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) is the state-level counterpart the same Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 creates alongside the NHRC, which this site's own National Human Rights Commission note already covers in depth. Rather than repeat that Act's shared background, this chapter isolates exactly where the SHRC's own composition, appointment, and jurisdiction diverge from the NHRC's, since a statement-based question on either commission is built almost entirely from swapping one commission's specific rule for the other's.

Composition: a High Court standard, not a Supreme Court one

Where the NHRC's Chairperson must have been a Chief Justice of India or a Supreme Court Judge (per the 2019 Amendment this site's NHRC note already covers), the SHRC's Chairperson need only have been a Chief Justice of a High Court, or a Judge of a High Court, a High Court standard rather than a Supreme Court one, the same qualification-level gap this site's High Court and Advocate General of the State notes already establish for other state-level offices measured against their Union counterparts. A sitting High Court Judge, or a sitting District Judge appointed as a Member, requires prior consultation with the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court, the state-level parallel to the CJI consultation the NHRC note already flags for a sitting Supreme Court Judge or High Court Chief Justice at the Union level.

Appointment by the Governor, on a state-level committee

The Chairperson and Members are appointed by the Governor, on the recommendation of a committee headed by the Chief Minister, with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, the State Home Minister, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly as its other members; in a state with a Legislative Council, that Council's own Chairman and Leader of the Opposition are added to the committee as well. This mirrors, at state level, the same structure this site's NHRC note already describes for the Union committee (Prime Minister, Lok Sabha Speaker, Home Minister, and the Leaders of the Opposition in both Houses), the Governor and Chief Minister-led committee simply standing in for the President and the Prime Minister-led one.

Appointed by the Governor, removable only by the President

The sharpest asymmetry in this chapter, and the one most worth holding precisely, is that although the Governor appoints the SHRC's Chairperson and Members, they can be removed only by the President, on the same grounds and through the same process the Act prescribes for removing the NHRC's own Chairperson and Members. A Governor who appointed a Chairperson has no independent power to remove that same person; removal runs through the Union executive regardless of which level of government made the appointment. This is a genuinely close cousin of a pattern this site's Chief Minister note already flags for the State Election Commissioner, whose own removal is pegged to a High Court judge's standard rather than anything the Governor controls: a state-level appointment whose security of tenure is deliberately insulated from the very authority that made the appointment in the first place.

Jurisdiction: confined to the State List and the Concurrent List

The most consequential difference is jurisdictional rather than compositional. The NHRC's own jurisdiction, as this site's NHRC note establishes, runs across the full range of matters the Protection of Human Rights Act covers nationally. An SHRC, by contrast, may inquire into human rights violations only in respect of subjects falling within the State List and the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule; a matter that falls within the Union List's own exclusive domain is simply outside an SHRC's reach, whatever the underlying human rights concern, and belongs to the NHRC instead. This tracks the same federal division of subject-matter competence this site's other state-versus-Union notes already build around specific institutions, applied here to human rights jurisdiction directly rather than to a body's own composition or appointment.

Quick revision points

• Chairperson: a former Chief Justice of a High Court, or a Judge of a High Court (not the NHRC's Chief Justice of India/Supreme Court Judge standard). A sitting Judge or District Judge Member needs prior consultation with that High Court's own Chief Justice.
• Appointed by the Governor, on the recommendation of a committee: Chief Minister (head), Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, State Home Minister, Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly (plus the Legislative Council's Chairman and Leader of the Opposition, where one exists).
• Removed only by the President, even though the Governor made the appointment, the same the-appointing-authority-cannot-remove asymmetry the Chief Minister note already flags for the State Election Commissioner.
• Jurisdiction limited to the State List and the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule; Union List matters remain the NHRC's own domain regardless of where the violation occurred.
• Term: 3 years or age 70, whichever is earlier, the same figures this site's NHRC note already establishes for the Union body.

Holding the SHRC's High Court-level qualification bar, its Governor-appoints/President-removes asymmetry, and its State-and-Concurrent-List-only jurisdiction as three separate, precise departures from the NHRC, rather than assuming the two commissions are simply scaled copies of each other, is what this short chapter's exam value actually rests on.