By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JAN 23, 2020: THE Department of Justice, Government of India, celebrated 1,50,000 registrations for advice on Tele-Law, which is an initiative to provide pre-litigation advice to the needy people, here yesterday. The event was organized by CSC Corporation in association with the Department of Justice.

The workshop was attended by a large number of Para Legal Volunteers and Village Level Entrepreneurs of Common Service Centres (CSCs). It was highlighted in the workshop that Tele-Law provided a platform to give pre-litigation advice to the needy and unreached sections of the society. A need was felt to strengthen this programme to combine digital technology with persons having knowledge of law for better functioning.

Speaking on the training programme, the Secretary, Justice, Ministry of Law & Justice, Dr. Alok Srivastava, said that the Tele-Law Team has trained 930 Master Trainers who will in turn train about 56 thousand Para Legal Volunteers (PLVs) and Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) all over the country. A better and regular training is needed for PLVs and VLEs for providing a better advice to the people, he added.

The participants were also addressed on the subject of Citizen Duties. It was stressed that one must always remember that we have rights along with duties and we have to perform our duties with highest degree of sincerity.  

The Tele-Law initiative was launched on April 20, 2017 with an aim to provide legal advices in the villages through CSCs. A Pilot project started in 1800 CSCs in 11 States in UP, Bihar, North Eastern States and UT of Jammu and Kashmir. This scheme has been expanded to 115 Aspirational Districts in 100 days programme of the Government of India.

A dedicated website on Tele-Law is maintained by the Department of Justice which has been designed with support from CSC eGovernance and has translated in to 22 languages. A Tele-Law mobile application is available for the PLVs to pre-register Tele-Law cases. A Tele-Law Dashboard is also developed with decentralized features for login and registration of cases and view the status of cases added for Panel Lawyers, Para Legal Volunteers etc.   

Top 3 transacting VLEs under Tele Law were awarded on this occasion. A Memorandum of Understanding between CSC Academy and Capgemini was exchanged on the occasion. A Quiz programme was organized on the Constitution Day.

The Secretary, Justice, Ministry of Law & Justice, the Addl. Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, MD to CSC Corporation, Senior Officials from Law and IT Ministries were present on the occasion.