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Call for family court in every district

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI May 16. The Committee on Empowerment of Women has recommended to the Centre that it take immediate steps for setting up at least one family court in each district in the country so that women do not have to travel long distances to reach these courts.

The 12th report of the committee which was placed in Parliament recently noted with concern that even after 17 years of the enactment of the Family Courts Act, only 84 family courts had been set up in 17 States and one Union Territory.

Family courts have not been set up in Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Nagaland, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep.

The committee said that various reasons had been advanced by the States for non-establishment of family courts such as cities not having requisite population of one million, insufficient number of matrimonial cases, lack of financial resources. The committee, which was not impressed by these reasons, felt that by not setting up family courts as envisaged in the Act women had been deprived of the benefits which would have accrued to them by way of quick and fair disposal of matrimonial disputes.

The non-establishment of family courts reflected the failure on the part of the Department of Justice in the Union Law Ministry to fulfil its responsibility to properly administer an Act of Parliament, the committee felt.

Except for writing to the State Governments in a routine manner, the Department had not taken any concrete steps to persuade them to set up family courts.

It must be noted that the Centre has been providing financial assistance for construction and running of family courts.

The committee was constrained to note that family courts had been established in metropolitan cities and not in all the eligible cities and towns.

Therefore, it recommended that steps be taken to set up family courts in every district in the country for the benefit of women.

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