The Hindu : Natural justice denied to Women's Commission

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 22, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

Natural justice denied to Women's Commission

By K.P.M. Basheer

KOCHI APRIL 21. Procedural and legal niceties and administrative decency were given the go-by by the Government while packing off the State Women's Commission.

This is in spite of the fact that its chairperson, D. Sreedevi, was a former High Court judge and the commission members were appointed for a five-year term. The term of the commission head and members is five years.

The Act under which the Women's Commission was set up provides for the removal of the members only on grounds of misconduct.

The chairperson and the seven members were not informed of the dissolution of the commission. The mandatory one-month notice, applicable in the case of even low-level contract jobs, was not served on the members of such a high-visibility, wide-impact commission.

Though the reported move to reduce the size of the commission, said to be on a recommendation by the State Planning Board to cut Government expenditure, had been in the air for sometime, the commission had never been taken into confidence.

``None of us were informed of the winding up of the commission,'' a former member told The Hindu. "Let alone observing legal niceties and `janaadhipathya maryaada' (democratic decency), they (the Government) did not even call us on the phone to inform us of the dissolution.'' This `nasty treatment' was meted out to a body whose head was a sitting High Court judge when she was appointed. And, significantly, all the members were women.

The commission was dissolved on April 19, exactly a year after Ms. Sreedevi had taken office. The dissolution was the first order signed by the new Governor, Sikhander Bhakt. The dissolved commission had been set up by the former LDF Government after the Sugathakumari-headed panel had completed its term.

The UDF Government had not been quite friendly to the commission. For instance, the investigation division of the commission had been headless for some time, as the Government had declined to extend the DIG's term. The post of the Circle Inspector had been vacant for long.

The two women constables posted to the commission had gone back to their respective posts, as their term was not extended.

Insiders feel that it was not coincidental that the dissolution came a few days before the panel was to have started probing the sexual harassment complaints against two Ministers and an MLA.

Rumours about the Government move to cut the commission's size to three members had been doing the rounds for a couple of months.

But, the commission was not consulted on the repercussions of the move. Neither was the commission's nature of work properly studied and workload assessed before taking such a drastic step.

In fact, even with a strength of seven, the commission was finding it hard to run its affairs smoothly. (Tamil Nadu had recently raised the number of its commission from seven to 10). Each of the members had to take care of two districts, apart from other collective work.

The workload was mounting and the commission could handle only a fraction of the roughly 500 complaints it used to receive from women every month.

The dissolution came at a time when the commission was in the process of decentralising its functioning by encouraging all the panchayats, municipalities and corporations to set up vigilance committees to tackle complaints of harassment of women at the local level.

District-level committees, headed by Collectors, were formed in some districts and other districts were to follow this.

Ms. Sreedevi, whose tenure has now been reduced by four years, had taken up the job declining a key posting — that of the chairperson of the Railway Claims Tribunal with the status and salary of a High Court Chief Justice.

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