Hut Bay, Apr 01: A legal awareness camp was held at R K Pur in Little Andaman on Friday. Inaugurating the awareness camp at the Community Hall at R K Pur, the Secretary of Law and Member Secretary of State Legal Services Authority, Shri S N Chatterjee emphasized that the people must know about their legal rights and the benefits available under various welfare programmes being implemented as per the legislations passed in the parliament. He said the people in the rural areas can get 100 days employment in a year as their legitimate right as per the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Besides, the Right to Education Act ensures all the children in the age group of 6 to 14 years get free and compulsory education in all the schools.
Addressing the participants, the District and Sessions Judge, Shri S Chattopadhyaya informed that the role of the alternate dispute redressal forum called as the Lok Adalats in ensuring speedy delivery of justice has been realized and proved successful every where. He further revealed that the Lok Adalats held in different parts of these islands settled a large number of cases in record time and thereby ensuring prompt delivery of justice to the people at the grass root level. Expressing concern over the large number of cases pending in the courts, he said approaching the courts even for the small disputes will be time consuming and more expensive and the Lok adalats came to the rescue of the people in settling such avoidable disputes.
He also informed that a Lok Adalat will be organized in Little Andaman depending upon the number of cases pending for settlement.
In the interactive session, the participants raised the questions on various legal issues. Responding to a question raised by a PRI member on the issue of birth certificate, it has been clarified that birth certificate can be obtained even at the later period from the concerned authority by fulfilling the criteria, and no child can be denied admission in any school for want of birth certificate.
Smt Namita Mistri, Panchayt Samiti Pramuk, Shri Jivraj kishan Tehsildar, Shri Eswarlal, Executive Officer, Shri T N Krishnamurthy, Deputy Chief Engineer of Andaman and Lakshadweep harbour works and Expert on RTI, Shri R Ajay Kumar, Divisional Forest Officer and IFS Probationers participated in the programme as special guests. The Panchayat President, Shri Asmanju Haldar moderated the entire session.
A large number of villagers, mostly Bengalis attended the prgramme. They opined that it was of immense useful to them as almost the entire session was conducted in simple Bengali language.
The State Legal Services Authority(SLSA) organized a number of such awareness programmes across the islands for the benefit of the people in remote areas.
