Now gram nyalayas at Panchayat level

The Law Ministry has come up with a new legislation for setting up 2,000 gram nyalayas at the Panchayat level all over the country.

Updated on: Apr 11, 2007, 22:11:14 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Judicial system is all set to reach the lowest level of Indian democracy - Panchayats. India would soon have gram nyalayas at the Panchayat level to dispense civil, marital and family disputes.

The Law Ministry has come up with a new legislation for setting up 2,000 gram nyalayas at the Panchayat level all over the country. The proposal formulated in consultation with the Ministry of Panchayat Raj would be discussed at the Union Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

Based on the recommendations of 114th Law Commission report of 1986, the Law Ministry has drafted an elaborate legislation for setting up the courts, each having two judges, to look into all the village level disputes. "Their (judges) duties and functions have been detailed in the proposed law," a government functionary said.

The court’s to be set up at tehsil or taluk level will have jurisdiction of the panchayat and will have power to summon any document or official from the government. "It can also get the matter resolved between the two parties before starting the legal process," an official said. To make the court more people friendly, the government wants that all proceedings should be recorded in the local language.

According to government officials, the courts will look into civil disputes like encroachment, property disputes like that of water channel or of village land, family disputes like divorce, inheritance and succession, apart from other civil disputes. The pecuniary jurisdiction for civil courts would extend to Rs 2 lakh and for criminal matters, to imprisonment of up to two years. The verdict of the village courts could be challenged in the district court.

In a bid to ensure transparency in selection of judges, all appointments will be cleared by the Chief Justices of the state high courts in consultation with two more judges of the high court. A district level selection panel will short-list the panel based on the minimum qualification prescribed by the state government.

"We would like to involve more women judges," an official said, while the state governments would be asked to introduce the element of legal aid by paying for legal aid lawyers to assist the courts.

The 114th Law Commission report headed by Justice DA Desai had recommended setting up of the gram nyayalas to speed up disposal of the cases and reduce burden on sub-division level and district level courts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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