Very soon children in conflict with law, lodged in the State’s 10 Observation homes, may be the income tax payers.
The Jharkhand State legal Services Authority (JHAlSA) in association with the Department of Women and Child Welfare launched an ambitious programme on Saturday at Observation home here to impart vocational training to the inmates and prepare them for earning income tax-paying income as part of their rehabilitation.
Under the project, which is the brainchild of Justice DN Patel, Executive Chairman of JHAlSA, a partnership firm will be registered with inmates as stakeholders.
In the first phase, 14 inmates will be trained in screen and offset printing for the next two months. A printing machine will be installed in the observation home campus where they will be involved in gainful employment. Presently, there are over 90 inmates in the Ranchi Observation home
Director, Jharkhand State Children Protection Committee, under the Department of Women and Child Welfare, Rajesh Kumar alongwith Ranchi Judicial Commissioner Navneet Kumar was also present on the occasion.
“We want them to earn adequately and not only give jobs to others, but also pay income tax over their earnings. There will be no dearth of orders and marketing their products,” pointed out Justice Patel. “To begin with, JHAlSA will place orders for printing the leaflets, files notebook etc,” he pointed out.
The JHAlSA alone buys stationeries worth over Rs10 lakh for its own use every year. Besides, the district legal services authority (DlSA), functional in every district also uses such stationeries in huge bulk.
Maintaining the project as a process of social integration of the child offenders, he said that a child in conflict with law will continue to be involved in such gainful jobs with his consent even if he gets bail or acquitted in a case. “The purpose is that they do not indulge in crimes again and are properly rehabilitated after acquittal,” he added.
Justice Patel said such a model for rehabilitation for the juvenile offenders has been launched for the first time in the country. “So, various aspects of the proposed partnership firm are being studied minutely and will be registered only after taking in consideration various legal issues involved in it,” he added.
“We have begun the project on experimental basis and will be replicated in other observation homes if it becomes successful,” he added. “We are also in talks with other Government departments and corporate houses to get such orders. We hope it will be successful once we ensure quality of their work,” he added.
Notably, the Jharkhand High Court’s earlier initiative to get the summons and other legal papers printed by murder convicts, particularly women inmates from the loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan Central Jail in Hazaribagh and Birsa Munda central jail, Ranchi has been a huge success.
Some time back, the Jharkhand High Court had placed an order of over Rsone crore to print 30 types of forms for summons, warrant, deportation etc, besides preparing file board, cover file to the jail to be used by the courts across the State. Earlier, the High Court incurred over Rs2 crore over printing of stationeries from the private printing press. This project too had been mooted by Justice Patel as acting Chief Justice in August, 2013.