NHRC Foundation Day 2026: Right To Water Means Safe, Reliable Supply, Not Mere Tap Connections, Says CJI Surya Kant

The Commission marked the occasion with a national conference on water. The CJI said the choice of theme showed that “human rights are not abstractions. They are as concrete as a glass of clean water in the hands of a child.”

Opening the address, the CJI remarked, “Constitutions, like people, are best understood on their birthdays.” Referring to the NHRC Chairperson, Justice V. Ramasubramanian as “my brother Subramanian”, CJI Kant recalled that Parliament had created the Commission “to stand guard over human dignity”, and said it had since “grown from a new idea into a trusted address for the aggrieved”.

Citing figures given by the Secretary General Piyush Goyal, the CJI noted that the Commission had registered more than 24 lakh cases in 33 years and disposed of over 23 lakh, a disposal rate exceeding 98 per cent.

CJI Kant said the framers had entrusted courts with enforcing rights, but that “a person in a remote district may find it difficult to even reach a courtroom.” The Commission filled that gap, “If the Constitution is the promise, the Commission is one of its keepers. It listens to those who cannot easily speak, and it can act on its own without waiting to be asked.”

The CJI connected the Commission to “a solitary lighthouse standing steadfast at the edge of society’s vast, restless sea. Its purpose is not to still the waves of injustice, but to cast a guiding light for those adrift in the darkness.” CJI Kant cited its interventions in custodial torture and deaths, bonded labour, silicosis from industrial exposure and the rights of marginalised communities.

According to the CJI Surya Kant, human rights protection “must go beyond identifying a violation. It must also seek accountability, meaningful relief for those affected, and changes that prevent the violation from recurring.”

“The influence of a human rights institution does not come from the coercive force of its orders, but from the credibility it earns over time,” CJI Kant said. “Its moral authority is like a bank balance. It is built slowly, deposit by deposit, and it can be spent very quickly. Every careful inquiry, every timely intervention and every honest report adds to that balance," he added.

Framing the constitutional test as “How does the last person in the line live?”, the CJI said, “The true measure of a human rights institution is therefore not only the number of cases it decides, but whether it can be heard by those who are least able to make themselves heard.”

He also talked about the undertrial prisoner who has never met an advocate, the migrant worker without papers, the elderly person abandoned by family, persons with disabilities and the woman who works from dawn to dusk unseen by the systems meant to protect her.

The CJI observed that in India the experience of rights is often decided in a remote village, a neighbourhood or a household rather than in the capital. The National Commission could set standards and identify wider patterns, but State commissions “are often closer to the ground where the violations occur.”

Speaking of Article 21, CJI Kant said, “What began as a protection against deprivation of life and personal liberty has evolved into a guarantee of life with dignity.” Noting that the Supreme Court’s environmental jurisprudence had recognised a right to pollution-free water and air, the CJI added, “The constitutional question therefore is no longer only what the state must refrain from doing, but also what it must ensure so that people can live with dignity.”

“Water is where life, dignity, and responsibility meet,” CJI Kant said, pointing to the homemaker who loses hours each day to fetching water and the farmer whose future depends on irrigation. “Water therefore is not an isolated entitlement. It is one of the conditions that makes the fulfillment of every other right possible, he added.

Referring to the recognition of safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right by the United Nations General Assembly in 2010, the CJI commended India’s expansion of household tap connections in rural areas, but said the “more demanding” question was: “Is the water safe, reliable, and available where the family needs?”

CJI Kant said, "water cannot be treated as a responsibility of any one institution. The government must build and maintain supply systems, courts must step in when constitutional rights are violated, and human rights commissions “must investigate complaints, identify systemic failures, and ensure that concerns which may otherwise remain invisible receive institutional attention.”

The CJI added, “Water itself teaches us something consequential. It crosses boundaries. Our response to it must do the same.”

“The person at the end of the line is not necessarily someone living among us today. It may also be the child who has not yet been born,” CJI Kant said. “Every aquifer depleted, every river polluted, and every source of drinking water compromised transfers a burden to a generation that had no part in creating it. The right to water must therefore be understood not only as a right of the present, but as a responsibility to the future," he said.
NHRC Mobile App Launch

The CJI welcomed the launch of the NHRC India mobile application and the digitalisation of the Commission’s records. He said, “By bringing justice to the fingertips of every citizen, this app will make the Commission more accessible to those who have traditionally found it difficult to approach formal institutions.”

CJI Kant closed by wishing that the Commission would remain an “ever-vigilant lighthouse” guiding people “through the turbulent sea of injustice”.