Come January 26, and over 9,000 movie halls in India will play the theme song of the National Legal Service Authority (NALSA) before the beginning of each movie for 30 days as part of its outreach initiative.
Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjan Gogoi, executive chairman of NALSA, said the objective of the outreach programme was to educate about 52 crore people about the benefits available to them from the government.
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Entitlements
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“In our experience, the government department wants to give benefits but they don’t know to whom,” Justice Gogoi said announcing a new ‘Legal Services Camp Module’. He said the new camp will focus on connecting people with their entitlements under various Central and State-sponsored welfare schemes or legislations.
Justice Gogoi said one such camp was held successfully in his home-State Assam, and the next camp will be held at Rewa village in Madhya Pradesh with focus on a cluster of about 50 villages.
He said the camp will be akin to a fair where various government departments will set up respective stalls to pass on their benefit programmes.
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NALSA will identify the people according to their needs and send them over to the particular stall for “real time delivery” of benefit at the spot.
Apart from the camp in Rewa, which is expected to attract around 10,000 people, each State and Union Territories will set up a camp once every month between January and March.
Justice Gogoi also announced the opening of around 3,200 legal literacy clubs in government schools across the country with the objective of making students aware of their legal rights.
Terming the outreach initiative as not just legal awareness but also legal empowerment, Justice Gogoi said the objective was “to give a man his due as per law”
He said NALSA was also in the process of digitisation of around 700 legal services clinics in jails and installation of around 1,250 LED monitors in court complexes in 640 districts across the country to spread awareness.