A selection committee to nominate the new chair and six members for the National Human Rights Commission is scheduled to sit for their first meeting on November as the three-year tenure of the rights watchdog expired on September 22.

The committee would sit for the meeting at the parliament, said Kamal Billah, the personal secretary to the speaker.

According to section 7 of National Human Rights Commission Act, the seven-member selection committee is led by the parliament speaker. It includes comprising the law and home ministers, the Law Commission chair, the cabinet secretary and two lawmakers — one from  the Treasury Bench and the other from the opposition — chosen by the speaker.

Section 7(2) states that the law ministry shall provide the selection committee with necessary secretarial assistance in discharging its function.

No meeting was held although the immediate past commission expired on September 22, said officials.

Rights activists, meanwhile, called for transparency in the selection process of the commission chair and commissioners who should be rights sensitive.

Ain O Salish Kendra executive director Mohammad Nur Khan is sceptical whether the government would appoint right people ahead of national elections due between end of 2023 and at beginning of 2024.

Section 6(2) of the act states that the commission’s chair and members shall be appointed from amongst people who have remarkable contribution in the fields of legal or judicial activities, human rights, education, social service or human development.

Commission secretariat sent a letter on August 30 to the Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division stating that the commission’s tenure would expire on September 22 but the government was yet to reply.

The government, meanwhile, has reappointed former chief justice ABM Khairul Haque as chairman of Bangladesh Law Commission for the next three years after the expiry of his tenure as the chair on July 23.

Justice Khairul Haque has been appointed chairman of the Law Commission for the fourth time, and a gazette notification to this effect on October 27, 2022.

Both speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury and law minister Anisul Huq did not respondent to New Age queries.

UN resident coordinator in Bangladesh Gwyn Lewis in past told New Age said, ‘As per the Paris Principles all governments are encouraged to establish a national human rights commission so to enable the role of watch dog and allow citizens to have a credible and independent mechanism to raise their concerns.’

Rights workers said that the commission formed in 2019 frustrated citizen organisations, rights defenders and journalists as most of the commission members were retired bureaucrats.