The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : 2 lok adalat courts to start functioning from October 1

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

2 lok adalat courts to start functioning from October 1

A. Subramani

They will be presided over by two retired High Court judges

CHENNAI: Two full-time permanent lok adalat ‘courts’ will start functioning on the Madras High Court premises from October 1.

To be presided over by two retired Judges of the High Court — Justice K. Govindarjan and Justice R. Balasubramanian — these courts will function on all working days, and the list of cases to be taken up by them would be part of the daily list distributed to advocate-subscribers.

Besides the retired judges, the courts would have two members to be nominated by the High Court Legal Services Committee, which is headed by its Chairman Justice P.D. Dinakaran. While one of the members will be an advocate the other will be a social worker or a doctor or an expert in the particular field. According to the Registry sources, nearly 1,000 cases, pending in the High Court, have already been identified for transfer to these two lok adalat courts.

Member-Secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority, G.M. Akbar Ali, said the identified motor accident compensation claims cases were being posted before three single judges of the court since September 13 for being referred to adalats. A batch of at least 30 cases each is being posted before Justice R. Sudhakar, Justice P.P.S. Janarthana Raja and Justice K. Suguna.

Explaining, C. Raghavan, Secretary of the High Court Legal Services Committee, said the parties to the listed litigation and their counsel were required to give consent for their cases to be referred to the full-time lok adalat courts.

The consented cases will be listed for hearing before these forums from October 1 onwards, so as to ensure that the parties got at least a two-week notice period.

Similarly, pending matrimonial matters were being posted before Justice K. Ravirajapandian for the consent of parties/counsel.

To be inaugurated by Chief Justice A.P. Shah on September 27, the facility will be available only in the Principal Bench of the Madras High Court here for the time being. A decision on extending the facility to the Madurai Bench of the court will be taken later.On September 27, the Chief Justice will also inaugurate ‘News From Court’ (Neethi Mandra Seythigal), a 25-minute Tamil news bulletin dedicated to court related reports to be telecast on Podhigai regional channel of the Doordarshan.

Sponsored by the Tamil Nadu State Legal Services Authority, it will cover various issues, including legal literacy/awareness, panel discussion and individual performance.

The news programme will be telecast at 7.05 a.m. every Monday.

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