Centre launches `Tele-Law’ to provide legal aid to poor

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : In its effort to make legal aid easily accessible to the marginalized communities and citizens living in rural areas, the Government of India has launched the ‘Tele-Law’. The Ministry of Law and Justice partnered with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which anchors the Digital India programme, to provide legal aid services through its Common Service Centres (CSC) at the panchayat level 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 the scheme before it is scaled up and rolled out across the country in a phased manner, according to a PIB release.

‘Tele-Law’ will enable people to seek legal advice from lawyers through video conferencing available at the Common Service Centres (CSC). Additionally, law school clinics, District Legal Service Authorities, voluntary service providers and Non-Government Organisations working on legal aid and empowerment can also be connected through the CSCs anywhere and anytime. 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 1,000 Common Service Centres (CSC), according to the PIB release.

Announcing, the launch of Tele-Law, Minister for Electronics, IT, Law and Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad on June 11, 2017, said, “I am extremely happy to have launched the Tele Law, the legal aid to poor which will be made available through the Common Services Centres. Tele-Law will fulfil our commitment to ensure access to justice & empowerment of the poor. The Common Services Centres and Para Legal Volunteers will offer easy legal advice to litigants in rural India making them digitally and financially inclusive.”

In addition to this, under this scheme, every Common Service Centre (CSC) will engage a Para Legal Volunteer (PLV), who will be the first point of contact for the rural citizens and will help them in understanding the legal issues. Women PLVs will be encouraged and trained under the scheme.