Mobile village courts: taking justice to villager’s door steps

 Context: The courts in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh has the pendency of about 10.2 lakh cases and there are only 480 judges at district level to cope with the burden. Village courts were the need of the hour given the huge backlog of cases at all levels of judiciary in the country. Also, there was a need to mitigate the legal problems of poor who found it difficult to travel to district courts.
 Innovation: The facility called "Court on Wheels“ is a specially designed bus, which will have a courtroom with facility of a retiring room for the presiding judge, computers, cabinets for books, files and facility for seating 10 persons. The intent is to give justice to people at their door steps particularly where people do not have easy excess to normal courts.
 How it works: This will be a unique regular court just like any other court with a cause list of cases. These courts will have jurisdiction over both civil and criminal matters and will work under the supervision of their respective high courts. 1st started in Oct 2007 in Gurgaon, 2nd in 2008 in Punjab, the mobile court is operational on four decided days of every week at four designated places and covers the population in a 10 km radius of a particular area. The presiding officer of the court will be of the level of an additional civil judge (senior division)-cum-sub divisional judicial magistrate. Other staff attached to the court will move with the mobile court. It will work under the supervision of their respective high courts. The new courts would have to decide a given case within three months

Read the news at : http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/05/stories/2007080560301200.htm