Delivery of justice at the doorstep of people in Andhra Pradesh is hampered to some extent by the absence of ‘village courts’ in most of the rural areas.
These courts are to be constituted at the mandal-level under the Grama Nyayalayas Act, 2008 and headed by special judicial first class magistrates. However, a negligible number of them were set up partly due to resource crunch.
The Grama Nyayalayas Act was passed in 2009 and about 5,000 village courts were sanctioned across the country (nearly 150 were expected to be set up in A.P three years ago) but a vast majority of them never took off due to the issues that remain to be sorted out by the Ministry of Law and Justice.
The village courts are aimed at delivering justice at places where the ‘causes of action’ arise so that the mountain of cases pending in the higher courts does not grow further due to appeals from the subordinate courts.
There was a proposal to set up a village court for two to three mandals as a unit in the initial stages before the project became fully operational. “It will be a good beginning but the judiciary cannot press for establishment of village courts as the government might be having its own constraints”, a judge at the Civil Courts here told The Hindu .
He said the village courts would help in ensuring that the opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen due to social, economic or other disabilities and wished that the project would materialise in the near future.
All India Lawyers’ Union State Secretary N. Srinivasa Rao said due priority should be given to village courts which help the government in implementing the National Litigation Policy announced in June 2010. This policy is meant to reduce the average time of pending of cases from 15 to three years.
Instead of appointing retired judges as first class magistrates heading the village courts, the government should induct serving judicial officers competent for the job, Mr. Rao added.
