INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD

Abstract: This article undertakes a critical examination of the Manipur Human Rights Commission (MHRC) as a fragile yet normatively significant institution operating within India’s conflict-governance framework. It argues that Manipur’s enduring “state of exception” is not produced by the absence of law, but by its systematic reconfiguration through exceptional legal regimes. Central among these are the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, the statutory limitations imposed by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, and the prior-sanction requirement now recodified as Section 218 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Together, these frameworks embed extraordinary powers within ordinary legality and structurally defer accountability for state violence.

Drawing on doctrinal analysis, institutional history, and close engagement with the MHRC’s quasi-judicial practice, the article demonstrates how the Commission has intervened in emblematic sites of human rights violations. These include extrajudicial executions, custodial deaths, arbitrary detention, gendered violence, and the mass civilian harms associated with the 2023 ethnic conflict. Although the MHRC lacks coercive authority and has suffered prolonged periods of institutional dormancy, it performs a form of “thin” accountability with substantial constitutional consequences. Through its inquiries, recommendations, and institutional records, the Commission fosters procedural transparency, maintains judicial scrutiny, and preserves legal memory in the face of denial and systematic erasure.

Conceptually, the MHRC is theorized as both a “poor man’s court” and a juridical archive. The article concludes by identifying institutional continuity, financial autonomy, and enforceable compliance duties as indispensable to restoring the operative meaning of rights in exceptional legal spaces.