P. Vishwanath Shetty

BANGALORE: The country's first legal literacy club for students has been opened at a college in Bagalkot.

The club is part of an initiative by the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (KSLSA) to involve students and the younger generation in legal education and make them legally literate.

The KSLSA plans to set up in a phased manner legal literacy clubs in all colleges of the State. The clubs are part of an on-going programme by the authority under the National Legal Literacy Mission 2005-2010 to spread legal awareness.

Chairman of the KSLSA and judge of the Karnataka High Court P. Vishwanath Shetty told The Hindu on Tuesday that the main aim of the club was to promote legal literacy among students and enable them to spread it to the other sections of society. He recalled that President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had inaugurated the programme in Bangalore on April 7. Mr. Shetty who is retiring from service next month and has been associated with the legal services for more than a decade, said these clubs were only part of a larger plan to educate the rural poor and also the middle class on legal issues.

Mr. Shetty said the KSLSA had decided to concentrate on rural and semi-urban areas, as it wanted to make more and more people aware about the benefits of the lok adalats and janata adalats.

Terming the adalats as inexpensive but efficient tools of justice, Mr. Shetty said the High Court had recognised its potential in solving amicably a variety of cases.

The Karnataka High Court, he said, had given a fillip to the lok adalats by holding them on a regular basis and had set an example with judges presiding over the lok adalats after the court hours. Mr. Shetty said the KSLSA operated under the Legal Services Act passed by Parliament. While at the national level, the Chief Justice of India was the patron-in-chief, at the State level it was the Chief Justice who was the patron-in-chief and a senior judge the executive chairman of the KSLSA.

Another judge would be the chairman of the High Court Legal Services Authority. At the district level, it would be the district judge who would head it.

Expressing satisfaction over the working of the legal services authority in Karnataka, Mr. Shetty pointed out that the State's achievements in this field had received nation-wide attention.

He said the KSLSA was the first in the country to utilise the services of primary and high school teachers to spread the message of legal literacy.

The services of teachers were utilised by the authority when it conducted legal literacy programmes in all taluks and this again was the first of its kind in the country.

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