By IANS
Chandigarh : The residents of Haryana will soon have the luxury of justice being delivered literally at their doorsteps as the country’s first mobile court becomes a reality in the state.
The facility called “Court on Wheels” will be started in the Punhana town of Haryana’s youngest district Mewat. Cases have been fixed for hearing from Aug 6 onwards. The mobile court has cost a whopping Rs.5 million.
“This is an epoch making beginning in a humble way. This is the first ever regular court that will be on wheels. It is for the first time in the history of independent India that a regular court will go to the doorsteps of people,” Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Vijendra Kumar Jain announced here Friday.
A specially designed bus, that will have the courtroom with facility of a retiring room for the presiding judge, will also have computers, cabinets for books, files and facility for seating 10 persons.
“The mobile court will be operational on four decided days of every week at four designated places and will cover the population in a 10 km radius of a particular area,” Jain said.
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. They will be paid extra for working with the mobile court.
“This is not like a mobile Lok Adalat. The lok adalats are organised at different places depending on the need. This will be a unique regular court just like any other court with a cause list of cases. It will decide on civil and criminal matters. It will be of a lot of benefit for poor litigants who have to travel distances to go to the nearest courts,” Jain said.
Mewat, which became Haryana’s 20th district only in 2005, does not even have a district and sessions court at present. All matters of the sessions court level are referred to the neighbouring district of Gurgaon.
The mobile court became a reality after the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government agreed to fund the project based on a proposal by the high court. The planning and conceptualisation of the court took six months.
“We wanted to reach the unreachable. I pray that this mobile court concept is a success. Then we can think of expanding to other areas,” Jain said.
Chief Minister Hooda, who was a practicing lawyer, said the mobile court was being started in an area where the literacy level of men and women was 35 and three percent only respectively.
In the Punhana block, where the mobile court is being set up, there are 2,274 pending cases out of which 698 are criminal cases and 1,576 are civil matters.
Jain said the court would transact serious business with full powers of a regular court to try and decide cases.
It will be equipped to receive plaints, civil and criminal applications, grant bail and remand accused to custody, issue summons, receive police reports, record evidence, pronounce and execute decrees and judgments, pass sentences and commit convicts to prison. It will also deliver certified copies of its orders, degrees and judgments.