Legal aid Clinics are intended to provide legal relief easily accessible to the indigent and backward sections of our society. They are almost on the lines of primary helath centres where a doctor and other auxiliary medical staff provide basic helath care to the people situated in village areas affected with poverty and social squalor, Like the doctors rendering health services to the people of the locality in the primary health centre, a lawyer manning the legal aid clinic provides legal services to the people . The thrust is on the basic legal services lige legal advise and assisting in drafting of notices, replies, application, petitions etc . The lawyer manning the legal cilinic will also attempt to resolve the disputes of the people in the locality, preventing the dispures form maturing into litigation. This provides the lawyer in the legal aid clinic an opprtunity to undersatan the difficulties favced by the people in the distant villages for access to justice . Legal aid clinics have to be manned by para-legal volunteers selected by the Legal Services Authorities and lawyers with a sense of commintment ,sensibility and sesitiveness to the problems of common people .
Legal aid clinic is on ot the thrust areas envisioned the NALSA's Quinqennial vision & strategy document . NALSA plans to set up legal aid clinics in all villages.
Name Of the Scheme.
The Scheme shall be called the National Legal Services Authority (Legal Aid Clinics ) Scheme, 2010.
Objective :-
The objective of the Scheme is to provide legal services to the poor , marginalised and weaker sections of the society as categorised in Section 12 the Legal Services Authorities Act 1987 (Central Act ) , especially to the people living in far away places including the places with geographical barriers , away from the seats of justice and the offices of the legal services institutions ( Legal services institutions , means the Taluk/Sub-divisional / Legal Services Committees , State Legal Services Authorities and Supreme Court Legal Services Committee established under the Legal Services Authorities Act , 1987)
The aim of the Scheme is to provide an inexpensive local machinery for rendering legal services of basic nature like legal advice, drafting of petitions , notices , replies, applications and other documents of legal importance and also for resolving the disputes of the local people by making the parties to see reason and thereby preventing the disputes reaching courts. In cases where legal services of a higher level is required the matter can be referred to the legal services institutions established under the Legal Services Authorities Act , 1987.
Location of Legal Aid Clinics :
The legal aid clinics established by the Legal Services Authorities shall be located at a place where the people in the locality can easily access . A room withiin the office building of the local body institutions like village panchayat shall be ideal .
Sign-board exhibiting the name of the Legal Aid Clinic
There shall be a sign-board both in Englis and the local language, depicting the name of the legal aid clinin. The board shall display the working hours and the days on which the clinic will be open. Working hours of Legal Aid Clinics shall be decided by the legal services institutions having territorial jurisdiction in consultation with the District Legal Services Authority .
In next post we will see more about the Scheme ..............continued ........
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