Department of Justice (DoJ), Ministry of Law and Justice has undertaken various initiatives/projects and developed scheme to increase free legal aid and ensure access to justice to the citizens with the aim to fulfil the obligation as enunciated under Article 39A of the Indian Constitution.

In 2021, a comprehensive, pan- India scheme titled“ Designing Innovative Solutions for Holistic Access to Justice in India” (DISHA) was launched for a period of five years (2021- 2026) with a total outlay of Rs. 250 crores. The DISHA scheme aims to provide easy, accessible, affordable and citizen- centric delivery of legal services through the scheme of Tele-Law, Nyaya Bandhu (Pro Bono Legal Services) and Legal Literacy and Legal awareness programme. Till 30^th November 2024, Tele- Law service has been made available across 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats in 785 districts across 36 States and UTs and has rendered pre - litigation advice to 1,03,06,149 beneficiaries. The Nyaya Bandhu (Pro Bono Legal services) enables seamless connect through the Nyaya Bandhu Application (available on Android/iOS) between the interested Pro Bono Advocates and registered beneficiaries who are entitled for free legal aid under Section 12 of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987. As on 30^th November 2024, there are 8614 Pro Bono advocates registered under the Nyaya Bandhu program. Through the Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness programme approximately 86 lakh beneficiaries at the State and district and local level have been made aware and sensitized on various rights, duties and entitlements.

Further, the eCourts Mission Mode Project, a national eGovernance project for ICT enablement of district/subordinate courts of the country was launched with a view to facilitate faster disposal of cases by speeding up court processes and providing transparent on-line flow of information on case status, orders/judgments etc. to the judiciary as well as litigants, lawyers, and other stakeholders. In Phase II of the project which started in 2015, 99.5 % of total Court Complexes across India inter-linked through WAN connectivity and in addition, various citizen centric services have been initiated. Accessibility to more than 27.64 crore orders/judgments is available on the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG). In addition, through Video conferencing, 3.38 crore cases have been heard by the District and Subordinate Courts and High Courts and 7.54 lakh cases by the Supreme Court. Live streaming started in 9 High Courts and constitutional bench of Supreme Court of India. Virtual Courts have been established in 21 States/UTs to try traffic offences. The additional features include CIS, NJDG, JustIS app for judges, eFiling, epayments, Judgements & Order Search portal, NSTEP, Justice Clock etc.

Presently, eCourts Phase- III has been approved, at an outlay of Rs.7,210 crore. This phase aims to create a unified technology platform for the judiciary and provide a seamless and paperless interface between the courts, the litigants and other stakeholders. The important features of the eCourts Phase- III includes Digitisation of the court records, both legacy records and pending cases; state of the art and latest Cloud bases data repository for easy retrieval; saturating all court complexes across India with e-Sewa Kendras to provide easy access to citizens not having the necessary know-how or computer equipment; Paperless Courts aiming to bring court proceedings under a digital format leading to transparency and accountability in the Indian Judiciary and speedy disposal of cases; Online Courts aimed at eliminating the presence of litigants or lawyers in the court, thus saving time and money; Use of emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and its subsets like optical Character Recognition (OCR) etc for case pendency , forecasting future litigation, etc.; expansion of scope of Virtual Courts beyond adjudication of traffic challans etc.

In addition, the Government has set up National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) under the Legal Services Authorities (LSA) Act,1987 to provide free and competent legal services to the weaker sections of the society as covered under Section 12 of the Act, to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizens by reason of economic or other disabilities, and to organize Lok Adalats to secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on the basis of equal opportunities. For this purpose, the legal services institutions have been setup from the Taluk Court level to the Supreme Court. The activities/programmes undertaken by Legal Services Authorities include Legal Aid and advice; Legal Awareness Programmes; Legal Services/Empowerment camps; Legal Service Clinics; Legal Literacy Clubs; Lok Adalats and implementation of Victim Compensation Scheme. The details of activities /programmes undertaken by Legal Services Authorities is at Annexure - A.

This information was given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Law & Justice, Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

 

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SB/DP/ARJ

 

Annexure-A

 

 

Legal aid and advice:

 

Years	Persons provided Panel Advocates	Persons benefited through Advice/ Counselling	Persons benefited through other services	Total
2022-23	2,91,410	6,39,230	2,84,129	12,14,769
2023-24	3,24,914	9,47,087	2,78,163	15,50,164
2024-25 (upto Sept,24)	1,68,380	5,05,386	86,012	7,59,778

 

Legal Awareness Programmes:

 

Years	No of Legal Awareness programmes organised	No. of Persons attended
2022-23	4,90,055	6,75,17,665
2023-24	4,30,306	4,49,22,092
2024-25 (upto Sept. 24)	1,90,231	1,61,35,058

 

Legal Services / Empowerment Camps:

 

Year	2021	2022	2023
No. of camps organised	3502	38,541	30043
No. of beneficiaries in all camps	1,40,94,600	1,15,10,207	1,14,64,230

 

Legal Services Clinics:

 

Years	2021-22		2022-23
Categories	Legal Services Clinics	Number of persons provided legal assistance	Legal Services Clinics	Number of persons provided legal assistance
Law Colleges/ Universities	1014	5989	1093	37351
Villages	4723	727955	4134	282140
Community Centres	1019	141404	776	88638
Courts	762	54871	904	116563
Jails	1181	218501	1177	264593
JJB/CWC/ Observation Homes	447	15742	439	29280
For the people of North-East	75	373	64	1170
Others	3755	139529	3124	194729
Total	12976	1304364	11711	1014464

 

Years	2023-24		2024-25 (upto Sept.24)
Categories	Legal Services Clinics	Number of persons provided legal assistance	Legal Services Clinics	Number of persons provided legal assistance
Law Colleges/ Universities	1034	27545	944	9689
Villages	3659	234515	3771	137556
Community Centres	971	75114	831	44351
Courts	1018	141539	1081	85278
Jails	1215	324867	1227	194229
JJB/CWC/ Observation Homes	479	48565	520	38072
For the people of North-East	47	615	49	1131
Others	2961	183280	3568	117173
Total	11384	1036040	11991	627479

 

 

Lok Adalats:

National Lok Adalats

 

 

State Lok Adalats

 

Years	No. of benches constituted	Pre-litigation Cases disposed of	Pending Cases disposed of	Total Cases disposed of
2021-22	74,480	114278	418251	532529
2022-23	62,194	94939	756370	851309
2023-24	9,865	219230	987873	1207103
2024-25 (upto Sept.24)	5,944	681938	329974	1011912

 

Permanent Lok Adalats (Public Utility Services)

 

Years	Cases settled
2021-22	1,18,136
2022-23	1,71,138
2023-24	2,32,763
2024-25 (upto Sept. ,24)	98,776

 

Implementation of Victim Compensation Schemes:

 

Years	Compensation Awarded in (Rs.)
2021-22	2,21,87,47,426
2022-23	3,47,80,37,352/-
2023-24	4,02,90,06,736/-
2024-25 (upto Sept.,24)	2,27,12,83,081/-

 

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