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The Department of Justice on Tuesday commemorated the milestone of crossing nine lakh beneficiaries under its Tele-Law programme.

The programme connects the disadvantaged sections of the society that may require legal advice from Panel Lawyers through e-interface platform available in Common Service Centres (CSC’s).

Tele-Law programme is presently operational in 633 districts, including 115 Aspirational Districts across 34 States and Union Territories through a network of 50 thousand Common Service Centres.

Tele-Law saw a surge of 369 per cent growth in number of beneficiaries seeking legal advice during last one year.

The Department of Justice partnered with NALSA and CSC e-Governance service India Limited for mainstreaming legal aid to the marginalised communities through CSC by using Tele-law.

What is “Tele-Law”?

Tele-law is a service using video conferencing facility and telephone services to connect lawyers to litigants who need legal advice. The service is provided through Common Service Centers or CSCs located at gram panchayat level. Legal advice is offered through a panel of lawyers stationed at the State Legal Services Authorities (SALSA) and Common Services Center (CSC). CSC is one of the mission mode projects under the Digital India Programme run by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). There are approximately 3.19 lakh CSCs in India. CSCs are located in Gram Panchayats.

Initiations have been made to connect citizens with lawyers using video conferencing facilities by Para-Legal Volunteers stationed at identified 50,000 CSCs across 28 States and 6 Union Territories of India.

Thrust to Women Empowerment

Encouragement is provided to get women para legal volunteers on board and empower them to enable access to provide for legal aid amongst rural areas and citizens. Tele law website is available in regional languages as well. Expert panel of lawyers placed at CSCs and Legal Service Authorities facilitate the Tele-law model.

How does it work?

The steps that one has to undertake for gaining legal advice is to get PLV meet the beneficiaries for pre-registering cases, followed by confirming scheduled date and time. The beneficiary then visits CSC where legal advice is rendered by the panel lawyer, and hence the beneficiary is served. It has been made available since 2017, and provided in selected 1800 CSCs of 11 states. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have the highest number of CSCs at 500, followed by Assam at 450 and then Jammu and Kashmir at 150 stations. Currently, Tele Law service is available in 28060 CSCs in 115 Aspirational Districts across 28 states in the country.

Who can avail ‘Tele-Law’ for free?

Citizens eligible for tele-law services without any charges are women, children, SC/ST persons, victims of trafficking, mentally-ill and differently-abled, victims of natural disaster/ethnic violence, workers in unorganised sector, people with low income groups, people under trial or in custody. The service is free for all those eligible for free legal aid as under Section 12 of Legal Services Authority Act, 1987. The rest of the citizens belonging to any other category have to pay a minimal fee of 30 rupees and bring Aadhar card, or any ID proof for verification.

Services offered

Matters that can be brought to avail Tele-law services can vary from dowry, family disputes, divorce, protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment, maintenance of senior citizens, rights regarding land and property, equal wages for men and women, maternity benefits and prevention of foeticide, prohibition of child marriage, cases covered under POCSO, POSH, process of lodging an FIR, atrocities against SC/ST members etc.

Download App on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=doj.telelaw.plv&hl=en_IN&…