National Commission for Women

The National Commission for Women (NCW) is a statutory body of the Government of India, generally concerned with advising the government on all policy matters affecting women. It was established in January 1992 under the provisions of the Indian Constitution, as defined in the 1990 National Commission for Women Act. The first head of the commission was Jayanti Patnaik. On 29 September 2014 Lalitha Kumaramangalam was appointed Chairperson.

The objective of the NCW is to represent the rights of women in India and to provide a voice for their issues and concerns. The subjects of their campaigns have included dowry, politics, religion, equal representation for women in jobs, and the exploitation of women for labour. They have also discussed police abuses against women.

The commission regularly publishes a monthly newsletter, Rashtra Mahila in both Hindi and English.

In December 2006 and January 2007, the NCW found itself at the center of a minor controversy over its insistence that Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code not be changed to make adulterous wives equally prosecutable by their husbands.4

But the grounds on which Ms. Vyas resists the logic of making this a criminal offence — particularly for women, as often recommended — are not as encouraging. She is averse to holding the adulterous woman equally culpable as the adulterous man because women, she believes, are never offenders. They are always the victims.

The NCW has demanded that women should not be punished for adultery, as a woman is "the victim and not an offender" in such cases. They have also advocated the amendment of Section 198 of the CrPC to allow women to file complaints against unfaithful husbands and prosecute them for their promiscuous behaviour. This was in response to "loopholes" in the Indian Penal code that allowed men to file adultery charges against other men who have engaged in illicit relations but does not allow women to file charges against their husbands.

The Commission has also worked to guarantee women security in unconventional relationships.

The NCW came under sharp criticism for their response to the attack by forty male members of the Hindu right-wing Sri Ram Sena on eight women in a bar in Mangalore in late January 2009. Video from the attack shows the women were punched, pulled by their hair, and thrown out of the pub.

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Wikipedia