Justice N V Ramana on Monday held a video conference with executive chairmen and member secretaries of all State Legal Services Authorities and discussed several issues including ways and means of providing competent legal aid to the needy.
Justice Ramana, who is the senior most judge of the Supreme Court after Chief Justice S A Bobde and the Executive Chairman of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), discussed implementation of legal aid defence counsel system and said 17 districts have been selected for implementing the system on a pilot basis.
The video conference was conducted to discuss issues such as well-structured training programmes for panel lawyers, making monitoring and mentoring committees at district level effective and rigorously implementing NALSA guidelines on the subject.
The video conference was aimed at strengthening the resolve of making front offices as one-stop centres.
"Focusing on the campaign of providing legal assistance at the pre-arrest, arrest and remand stage, the Executive Chairman, NALSA emphasized the need to provide effective legal aid to the needy people right from the stage he is called to the police station, train lawyers in law relating to pre-arrest, arrest and remand so that they effectively represent clients," the press release said.
It also highlighted the need to regularly identify convicts who require legal aid for filing appeals.
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"Measures such as timely filing of appeals, co-ordination with High Court Legal Services Committees and Supreme Court Legal Service Committee, regularly identify undertrials who need legal aid for filing bail applications or representing them before trial courts and strengthen jail Legal Aid clinics with properly trained lawyers and PlVs were addressed," said the release.
NALSA said the campaign will be implemented in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi and will be expanded to other states in the near future.
It said that next year five national Lok Adalats will be held on second Saturdays of February, April, July, September and December which would be focused on identifying old pending matters and resolving them.
The video conference discussed NALSA-devised campaign to identify convicts in jails whose appeals have not been filed and whose incarceration has exceeded their awarded sentences.
The campaign is meant to expeditiously provide legal aid to convicts who have not engaged private lawyers to file their appeals and to ensure that such appeals are filed expeditiously through legal services.
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