NCW has no power to advise, adjudicate or grant relief: HC

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, March 28

The Delhi High Court today ruled that the National Commission for Women (NCW) did not have any adjudicatory or advisory powers. The commission also had no power to grant any relief to the complainants claiming to be victims.

“We are clear in our mind that it has never been the legislative intent to empower NCW to arrive at any final conclusion on any complaint received by it or to grant any relief which a court is empowered to do,” Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal held.

The High Court delivered the verdict while dismissing the petitions of NCW and a woman on whose complaint the commission had issued an advisory to the Indian High Commission in Singapore. The woman had approached NCW in mid-2013 to prevent her husband from getting any foreign posting as this would enable him to abandon her and their child born earlier that year.

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She had also alleged that her husband was abusing her mentally and physically since their marriage in February 2008. Though posted in India, the husband was working for a Singapore-based company, which prompted NCW to write to the Indian mission. The woman had pleaded with the NCW to ensure that her husband was not posted outside India until the matrimonial dispute was resolved.

The company, however, sacked the husband following NCW’s advisory to the mission, prompting him to approach the High Court. A single judge Bench had partly allowed his plea and held that NCW had no power to issue advisories. The NCW and the woman preferred intra-court appeals against the ruling.

The division Bench affirmed the findings of the single judge that no provision of Section 10 of the NCW Act “empowers NCW” to send the advisory. The role of NCW as a coordinating agency at the national level to receive and process the complaints related to Indian women deserted by their overseas Indian husbands “is only to ensure that the women in distress are guided to appropriate agencies or authorities empowered and constituted to take action on their complaints and that the orders/directions issued by such agencies are in turn implemented by other agencies/authorities empowered/constituted/required to implement the same.

“All that NCW on receipt of complaint from the respondent no. 2 (wife) could have done is to advise her to approach the police/court empowered to compel the presence of the petitioner and to ensure that the police consider the application/representation of the respondent no. 2 in accordance with the law,” the Bench ruled.