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NHRC takes suo motu cognizance of Gorakhpur eye-camp tragedy

The rights body issues notices on its own motion after botched cataract surgeries blind several patients at a Uttar Pradesh eye camp.

What happened

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo motu cognizance — meaning it acted on its own initiative, without waiting for any victim to file a complaint — of botched cataract surgeries at a private hospital in Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh.
Surgeries were performed on 30 patients at an eye camp on 1 February 2026; 18 of them developed infections in the days that followed.
The outcomes were severe: 9 patients had an infected eye surgically removed, and 9 others lost vision in one eye.
As conditions worsened, affected patients were referred to higher centres in Delhi, Lucknow and Varanasi.
The Commission held that the facts disclosed serious human-rights concerns and issued notices to the Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh, and the Senior Superintendent of Police, Gorakhpur.
A detailed report has been sought within two weeks, covering the medical, regulatory and policing dimensions of the incident.

Background & context

An eye camp is a mass-screening-and-surgery model widely used across rural and semi-urban India to clear the backlog of cataract — the single largest cause of avoidable blindness in the country. Patients are gathered at a temporary venue, screened, and operated upon in large numbers, often free or at subsidised cost. The model delivers scale, but a single lapse in sterilisation, intra-ocular fluid quality, instrument handling or post-operative care can convert a routine, high-volume procedure into a cluster of infections — exactly the pattern that produced the Gorakhpur outcomes, where roughly three in five operated patients developed infection.

Because the camp ran at a private hospital and the failures span clinical standards, drug-and-device regulation, and the state's duty to protect health, the matter sits squarely within the remit of the rights body that takes up such failures of the state's protective obligations: the NHRC. Understanding the news therefore means understanding the institution acting on it — what the NHRC is, where its powers come from, and, just as important for the exam, what it cannot do.

The Commission was constituted under a specific statute, and the Gorakhpur eye-camp matter was not its only Gorakhpur intervention announced the same day: it also took suo motu cognizance of the reported death of an 11-year-old boy who fell into an uncovered, under-construction drain in the same district, issuing notices to the District Magistrate and the Senior Superintendent of Police. Read together, the two cases illustrate the everyday, administrative-failure character of most NHRC work — far removed from the high-politics image the body sometimes carries.

For Prelims

Full form & nature: National Human Rights Commission — a statutory body, not a constitutional one. It is created by ordinary law, so it can be altered or abolished by amending that law.
Parent statute: the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (PHRA). The Act also provides for State Human Rights Commissions (SHRCs) and Human Rights Courts.
Year established: the NHRC was set up in 1993, on 12 October 1993, following the 1993 Act.
"Human rights" defined in the Act: rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in international covenants and enforceable by Indian courts.
Composition (post the 2019 amendment): a Chairperson and members. The Chairperson must be a former Chief Justice of India or a former Judge of the Supreme Court. The 2019 amendment widened eligibility (it earlier required a former CJI only) and increased the number of members with knowledge of human rights.
Ex-officio members: the chairpersons of the National Commissions for SCs, STs, Women, Minorities, Backward Classes, Protection of Child Rights, and the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities serve as ex-officio members — a deliberately wide membership so the body sees rights through many lenses.
Appointment: by the President on the recommendation of a high-powered committee chaired by the Prime Minister (and including the Speaker, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, leaders of the Opposition in both Houses, and the Union Home Minister).
Tenure: after the 2019 amendment, the Chairperson and members hold office for three years or until the age of 70, whichever is earlier (the term was reduced from five years).
Removal: a member can be removed by the President only on proved misbehaviour or incapacity, after a Supreme Court inquiry — a security of tenure modelled on the protection given to judges.
Powers in inquiry: while inquiring, the Commission has the powers of a civil court trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure — summoning witnesses, requiring documents, receiving evidence on affidavit.
Suo motu cognizance: the NHRC can act on its own motion, on a petition by a victim, or on a court's direction — it does not need a formal complaint, which is precisely what happened here.
Time limit on inquiry: the Commission generally cannot inquire into a matter after one year from the date the act constituting the violation occurred.
Armed forces: in relation to the armed forces the NHRC's powers are limited — it can seek a report from the Central Government and make recommendations, but cannot summon or directly investigate.

What the NHRC is NOT: It is not a constitutional body (unlike the Election Commission, UPSC, CAG or Finance Commission) — it is statutory. Its findings and recommendations are recommendatory / advisory, not binding; it cannot itself punish the guilty, award enforceable compensation, or quash a decision. It cannot directly summon the armed forces. And it is not a court — though it has civil-court powers for inquiry, it does not pass binding judgments.

To survive a "consider the statements" question, it helps to place the NHRC inside the family it belongs to. India's rights-and-watchdog institutions fall into two distinct sets. Constitutional bodies (named in the Constitution itself) include the Election Commission, the Union and State Public Service Commissions, the Finance Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and the Attorney General. Statutory bodies — created by an Act of Parliament — include the NHRC, the National Commission for Women, the Central Information Commission, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Lokpal, and the National Green Tribunal. The NHRC sits firmly in the second set, alongside its own statutory cousins the State Human Rights Commissions and the Human Rights Courts that the same 1993 Act provides for.

For UPSC: The NHRC is a statutory body under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993; it can act suo motu and has the powers of a civil court while inquiring — but its recommendations are advisory, not binding, it has only limited reach over the armed forces, and it generally cannot take up a matter older than one year.

Why it matters

The case exposes the gap between a right on paper and a right delivered. The right to health is read by the Supreme Court into Article 21 (the right to life), and the state's duty to ensure safe medical care does not vanish merely because a service is delivered through a private hospital or a charitable camp. When mass eye surgeries produce a cluster of infections severe enough to cost patients their eyes, the failure is systemic — touching surgical-site sterilisation, the quality of intra-ocular fluids and consumables, the licensing and inspection of the facility, and the oversight that a District Health administration is supposed to exercise over camps. The NHRC's intervention forces the state to put that chain of accountability on record within a fixed deadline.

It also illustrates the value and the limits of the NHRC as an instrument. Its value lies in visibility and pressure: by taking suo motu cognizance and demanding a time-bound report from the very top of the state administration, it converts a local tragedy into a documented, monitored proceeding that the government cannot quietly let lapse. Its limit lies in enforcement: even after inquiry, the Commission can only recommend — prosecution, compensation and disciplinary action depend on the state acting on that recommendation, or on the courts. The Gorakhpur eye camp is thus a compact case study in why rights institutions matter and why, by themselves, they are not enough.

For Mains

Exemplification

A ready real-world example of a statutory rights body exercising suo motu cognizance over an administrative-and-health failure — useful wherever an answer needs a concrete instance of the NHRC actually working, rather than a textbook description of it.

Problematisation

The case foregrounds the structural weakness the body itself cannot cure: NHRC recommendations are advisory, not binding, so accountability still hinges on a willing executive. It also surfaces the regulatory gap in mass eye/health camps and the state's Article 21 duty to ensure safe care even through private providers.

Way-forward

Points naturally toward the reform debate — giving NHRC orders greater enforceability, tightening accreditation and inspection of surgical camps, and strengthening District-level health-quality oversight — without overstating any specific proposal.

Deploys into: the mandate, powers and limitations of the NHRC (GS2.8 — statutory and regulatory bodies); and the right to health and accountability in service delivery (GS2.13 — issues relating to health and the social sector).

National Human Rights Commission · 2026-03-03 · PRID 2235196 · PIB source ↗