Like medicos, law students to work at taluka level to provide legal aid: SC judge

New Delhi: Like medical professionals, who have to do a mandatory internship in rural areas, now law students will also be required to visit talukas to create legal awareness and provide quality legal aid to the people, Supreme Court judge UU Lalit said on Saturday. Justice Lalit, while addressing judges, lawyers, and legal services providers at a state-level conference ”Early Access to Justice at Pre-Arrest, Arrest and Remand Stage” appealed for opening the doors of legal aid for unrepresented persons by giving quality legal aid services. He also said he has been in touch with the Bar Council of India in this regard.

”I have been telling them, make it part of your curriculum at LLB level and this I said just few days back, we have courses like medicine, where after a person graduates, he gives it back to the society by serving as an internship in rural areas, correct! Why not with a legal professional? Why is it that the service of rural areas is the prerogative and preserve only of medical professionals,” asked Justice Lalit, who is also executive chairman of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA).

Justice Lalit, who is the senior-most judge after the Chief Justice of India, said, ”So we should adopt that, as a principle, when it comes to legal education. This is what I have been advocating, I have been stressing on this, with Bar Council of India persons and they have agreed, from 3rd year onwards, they will be regularly sending students, every law college will be adopting maybe two or three talukas and send the law students to those nearby talukas, so that as young students, as young professional, they have first-hand experience…”

The one-day programme was organized at Maharashtra Judicial Academy at Uttan under the aegis of NALSA, Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority, and State Legal Services Authority, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. He said that any person who is arrested in 24 hours must be produced before the magistrate and every judicial officer must ensure that every person must be granted early access to justice. ”What does that mean? Are we as judicial officers, to be driven by compassion and therefore release the man straightaway? That’s not the idea. We have to think in terms of what the merits of the particular matter demand,” he said. ”If the merit demands that the man must be arrested, the police must be facilitated by giving the custody of that man, then that judicial temperament in our mind will always say that the man deserves to be put behind bars for some time so that the societal interest gets subserved. So on one side as a judicially trained official, we are to take care of the societal interest, undoubtedly every one of us does that at various levels in the hierarchy,” Justice Lalit added.

According to him, at every possible stage, the man must have the advantage or the benefit of qualified legal assistance but right from NALSA and state legal services authorities to district and taluka level no legal aid is provided instead these authorities act as facilitators. ”We are just facilitators. We are not the ones who are going to appear for that man and present his case, we simply facilitate that mechanics, we have an apparatus and that’s why one has to see this NALSA as beautiful machinery which has been produced by the Parliament. There is no other scheme which is given in the hands of Judiciary, which is supposed to be in the interest of the society,” he said.

Justice Lalit emphasized quality legal assistance to be provided and how senior advocates are also being inducted into the programme. ”Like for instance, high courts of Punjab and Haryana and Delhi before they designate a person as a senior counsel, they look into the profile and they say, how many matters have you done pro bono? Some of the high courts go to the extent of getting an undertaking that after your designation you shall do at least 10 pro-bono matters every year,” he said.

Justice Lalit added that the point is a legal aid and free legal aid do not mean poor legal aid, free legal aid must mean quality service. ”If I go through this door and approach the legal aid, I must be assured that good quality assistance will be given to me, rather than if I go through the other door, where may I have to sell ornaments of my wife in order to support the litigation to be sponsored,” he said. Justice Lalit said that people don’t have confidence in legal aid machinery and that is more dangerous as only one percent land up with legal aid that is at a stage of trial and post-remand matters. ”One percent of those matters are at pre-arrest stage therefore you can see the minuscule percentage that we extend, any kind of assistance at pre-arrest stage because people are not even aware,” Justice Lalit said.