In a first of its kind initiative, legal authorities of Jharkhand are working on making the villages litigation-free. As of now they have started the programme from State Capital’s Mandar block which will soon be replicated to Badu village of Kanke block and others.
“Since 1987 efforts on making a village litigation-free are being carried out in India. We thought of adapting the concept and working on it. Six villages namely Kaimbo, Bargari, Murma, Nagra, Mahuajari and Mandro under Mandar block have been located initially. legal awareness camps are being organised with the help of para-legal volunteers of the legal aid clinics established in these villages. We are regularly finding out cases which can be solved outside the court within the panchayat level,” Ranchi District legal Services Authority coordinator Vinod Sahu said.
The district legal authorities are inspired by Deendayal Research Institute’s (DRI), Chitrakoot Project where 80 villages have been declared litigation-free in the way of making them self-reliant. “When the particular court succeeded in declaring 80 villages as litigation-free and is aiming to make more 500 villages free from the problem, we too can prove the potential of making our villages litigation free,” a local legal officer said.
Notably, for making any village litigation-free the responsibility of DSlA is to solve those cases which are not related to rape, murder or any serious offence with the help of panchayat.
“Initially we conduct a survey at village level to find out the number and type of cases. Applications submitted by villagers are scrutinised. Thereafter, the cases which are not related to murder, rape or any serious offences are solved by counseling both the parties in front of panchayat representatives. Our main aim is to solve as many cases as possible outside the court,” Sahu added.
DSlA has decided to hold camps for the litigation-free campaign at Badu village with the help of National University of Study and Research in law (NUSRl) students as volunteers. The students of the law cradle have formed an NGO named ‘Care About People Foundation’ (CAP) wherein the associated students will conduct the survey.
“Section 12 of legal Services Act mentions providing legal assistance to needy people like Below Poverty line without charging court fee. Our job will be gathering the cases during the camp and forwarding them to the JHAlSA or lok Adalat or higher courts,” CAP director Shaurya Krishna said.
Dealing the cases at panchayat level is often a challenging role for DSlA members. They find panchayat representatives indulged in corruption cases of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Indira Awaas Yojna, Ration Card, Window Pension, Kisan Card and Anganwadi works.
“We are first counseling the panchayat representatives and then the villagers because the former is seen to be a corrupted by one party in most of the cases,” said an official.