Mumbai:
Justice SR Bannurmath, former Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court, is set to take over as the chairman of the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission (SHRC). His predecessor, Justice Kshitij Vyas had resigned from the post in February last year. Since then the Commission has not been able to function, as the other members had also moved on to other agencies.
The Commission falls directly under the Chief Minister's Office. Every officer rank post at the body - the Chairman, Registrar and two members - has been lying vacant for some time and thousands of cases are pending with it.
But the state government, criticised for the inordinate delay in appointing the new chairman, did not provide any plausible explanation for it.
Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan though admitted to NDTV last week that the government had to speed up.
"Statutory Commissions must be put in place. The Human Rights Commission has been constituted and it will be notified in a day or two. We are also taking steps to appoint other commissions. The government itself has to work faster," he said.
Justice Bannurmath was born on January 23, 1948, at Dharwad in Karnataka. He was sworn-in as Chief Justice of the High Court of Kerala in March 2009.
He was also set to become the Karnataka Lokayukta in 2012, but the government's choice was rejected by then Governor HR Bhardwaj.