A division bench of the Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) High Court led by Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and comprising Justice N. Jayasurya on Monday indicated to the government that it should locate the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) within the State of A.P.
They were hearing a petition filed by the AP Civil Liberties Association, which complained that the SHRC did not have an office of its own in A.P. several months after the High Court ordered that the government should reconstitute the SHRC in compliance with the Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2019.
As a consequence, the aggrieved were forced to travel to Hyderabad to present their cases before the SHRC which is currently situated there.
The court gave three weeks’ time to the government to file an affidavit mentioning the steps taken to set up SHRC in the State.
On the lighter side, when the petitioner insisted that the government should move fast, Advocate General S. Sriram quoted his father as saying that ‘the horse which gallops gets beaten the most’, while pointing out that nothing was done between 2014 and 2019. The Chief Justice then quipped: “Rome was not built in a day. So let’s give time”.
