Question- The Government of India has launched the ‘Tele-Law’ programme in an effort to make legal aid easily accessible to the marginalized communities and citizens living in rural areas. The programme is being launched on a pilot basis in …
(a) Uttar Pradesh, Bihar
(b) Haryana, Punjab
(c) Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh
(d) Odisha, West Bengal
Ans: (a)
Related facts:-
- On June 11, 2017, the government of India launched the Tele-Law programme to facilitate easy legal aid accessible to the marginalized communities and citizens living in rural areas.
- The program will be jointly organized by the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
- The legal aid services will be provided through Common Service Centres (CSC) at panchayat level, spread across the country.
- In the first phase, the ‘Tele-Law’ scheme will be tested as a pilot across 500 Common service Centres (CSC) in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to understand the challenges and make necessary corrections to before rolling it out across the country.
- A portal called ‘Tele-Law’ will be also launched which will be available across the Common Service Centre (CSC) network.
- This portal will link citizens with law service providers with the help of a technology-enabled platform.
- Through Tele-law, people can get legal assistance from lawyers at Common Service Centers through video conferencing.
- Additionally, law school clinics, District Legal Service Authorities, voluntary service providers and Non-Government Organisations working can also be connected through the CSCs anywhere and anytime, in order to strengthen access to justice for the marginalized communities.
- The National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) will provide a panel of lawyers from State capitals, who will be available through video conferencing to provide legal advice and counselling to the applicants, across the 1000 Common Service Centres (CSC).
- Under this program, a para legal volunteer will be appointed on every Common service center, which will be the first point of contact for rural citizens and help them understand the legal issue.
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