In a bid to create legal awareness among schoolchildren and make them responsible citizens after they grow up, ‘legal literacy Clubs’ (llC) are being set up in schools across the State by Jharkhand State legal Services Authority (JHAlSA).
Club members are entrusted to create awareness among the schoolchildren through workshops, seminars as well as distributing pamphlets and booklets among them. “Our motive is to make children acquainted with the law of the land making them aware of the basic legal knowledge of the country,” said Member Secretary of JHAlSA SK Dubey.
“It becomes important for a child to know the law of the land as the incidents of children becoming victims of crime are increasing day by day,” added the Member Secretary. “Through the club, children are provided booklets and pamphlets related to the child laws, constitutional provisions as well as social aberrations like cruelty against women, dowry act, child marriage act, female foeticide and un-touchability etc which are still being practised in our society,” he said.
“The children are made the reading material available in a very easy and understandable language, making a group of children as resource persons entrusting them to take care of the reading materials,” said Dubey. “Besides the basic laws, the children are also made aware of their rights as well as duties towards the society and the country as a whole,” he added.
“Awareness about fundamental rights, human rights, consumer rights, labour rights and right to information is tried to be created among the children,” said Dubey. A set of 12 booklets has been prepared covering 32 topics as a reading material for llC.
“In order to satisfy the curiosity of the schoolchildren, reading material also covers 101 questions about the police along with their answers and 7 different topics regarding our laws and duties which are expected from a responsible citizen of a society,” said another official of JHAlSA.
Similarly, rules related to differently-abled persons as well as provisions of arbitration available to us while a case was pending before the court of law, he added. According to Dubey, the scheme basically was being run by National legal Services Authority of India (NAlSA) for creating a sense of legal awareness among the schoolchildren right from their childhood in order to make them a responsible citizen in future, benefitting to the society as a whole.
llC at Delhi Public School in Ranchi will be inaugurated on January 31 by Supreme Court Judge Justice SJ Mukhopadhyaya in presence of Chief Justice Virender Singh and Justice DN Patel of Jharkhand High Court. The club is already functional in Nirmala Convent, St Anne’s Girls School and some of the other schools in Ranchi and other adjoining areas of the State capital.