MINISTER OF LAW AND JUSTICE (SHRI SALMAN KHURSHID)
(a) : The Central Assistance provided to the States and UTs since the Ninth,
Tenth and Eleventh Five Year Plans are as under:
Ninth Five Year Plan - Rs. 376 crore
Tenth Five year Plan - Rs. 700 crore
Eleventh Plan - Rs. 1470 crore
(b) to (d) : The Cabinet, in its meeting held on 23.06.2011 has approved the
setting up of the National Mission for Justice Delivery and Legal Reforms,
The Mission spanning 5 years from 2011-2016 would focus on increasing access
to justice by reducing delays and arrears in the system.
The National Mission will focus on improvement in administration of justice
and justice delivery and legal reforms addressing diverse needs of all sections
of stakeholders. An illustrative and tentative Action Plan indicating nodal
responsibility, resource requirements, time lines etc., has been formulated
by the Department of Justice. The Action Plan, inter-alia covers five strategic
initiatives viz. Policy and Legislative changes, Re-engineering of procedures,
Human Resource Development, leveraging of Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) for better justice delivery and improving infrastructure. The tentative
Action Plan will be discussed and revised as advised by the governing bodies of
the Mission and finalised for implementation.
Infrastructure development for the subordinate judiciary will be a major programme
under the National Mission. In order to augment the resources of the State
Governments for development of infrastructure facilities for the judiciary, a
Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) had been in operation since 1993-94. Under the
National Mission, the existing CSS has been modified by increasing the ratio of
Central / State assistance from 50:50 to 75:25 focusing on court buildings and
residential quarters for subordinate judiciary. In case of North-Eastern State,
the ratio would be 90:10. The modified CSS is to be implemented in a mission mode
approach over the years 2011-2016.
The National Mission comprises of an Advisory Council, Governing Council,
National Mission Leader and the Mission Directorate. Advisory and Governing
Council has been constituted. The Secretary, Department of Justice will be the
National Mission Leader.
(b): With the objective of improving justice delivery, Thirteenth Finance Commission
has recommended a grant of Rs. 5000 crore to be utilized over a period of five
years up to 2010-2015. This grant is aimed at providing support to improve
judicial outcomes, and is allocated for the initiatives such as
(i) Increasing
the number of court working hours using the existing infrastructure by holding
morning / evening / shift courts; (ii) Enhancing support to Lok Adalats to reduce
the pressure on regular courts; (iii) Providing additional funds to State Legal
Services Authorities to enable them to enhance legal aid to the marginalized and
empower them to access justice; (iv) Promoting the Alternate Dispute Resolution
(ADR) mechanism to resolve part of the disputes outside the court system;
(v) Enhancing capacity of judicial officers and public prosecutors through
training programmes; (vi) Supporting creation or strengthening of a judicial
academy in each State to facilitate such training; (vii) Creation of the post
of Court Managers in every judicial district and High Courts to assist the
judiciary in their administrative functions and (viii) Maintenance of heritage
court buildings.
(c): The Government is implementing a central sector scheme for computerization of
the District and Subordinate Courts (e-Courts project) in the country and for
upgradation of the ICT infrastructure of the Supreme Court and the High Courts,
at a cost of Rs. 935 crore for the first phase which will connect 14,229 courts
in the country including video conferencing facilities. In the subsequent phase,
digitization, library management, e-filing and establishment of data warehouse are
expected to take place. The Project output would be beneficial to both improving
court process and rendering citizen centric services. Automation of case flow would
cover case scrutiny, registration, court proceedings and electronic monitoring of
all court-wise case pendency and performance assessment of Judges. In terms of
citizen centric services, online availability of case status, copies of orders
and judgments, cause list and eventually e-filing of cases will be available.
This project will also achieve one of the important goals of the Vision Document
2009, namely, the creation of National Arrears Grid, with the last mile connectivity
up to Taluqa courts. The complete coverage of the 14,249 courts in terms of hardware
and software will be achieved by March 2014 and the largest number of courts (12,000)
will be covered by March 2012.
(d): Enactment of the Gram Nyayalayas Act, 2008 which provides for establishment
of Gram Nyayalayas to improve access to justice to common man. Under the scheme,
the Government provides non recurring grant for creation of infrastructure and
also recurring grant on annual basis. Rs. 21.80 crore have been provided to the
States till 2010-11 under this scheme.
