The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Legal services authority to spread awareness in rural areas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 10, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Legal services authority to spread awareness in rural areas

Special Correspondent

Young lawyers will benefit in experience from this, says judge

— Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

Reaching out: (From left) Advocates’ Association President D.L. Jagadeesh, Justice V. Gopala Gowda of High Court of Karnataka and Executive Chaiman of KSLSA, and Director and Vice-President NIMHANS Prof. D Nagaraja on the Legal Services Day in Bangalore on Friday.

Bangalore: Seeking the support of the legal community, V. Gopala Gowda, judge of Karnataka High Court has said that the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (KSLSA) will hold programmes at the village panchayat and taluk levels across the State for creating legal awareness among the people and helping the poor and needy.

Mr. Gowda was speaking at a function organised by the Advocates’ Association here on Friday on the occasion of Legal Services Day.

The objective of KSLSA in holding programmes in rural areas was to check the cost of legal services, bring down the number of litigants and litigations and help create a peaceful and amicable social order. This would be possible with the active participation of legal communities in all the activities of the KSLSA, Mr. Gowda said.

Calling upon young lawyers, Mr. Gowda said that young lawyers might not get a handsome fee for their services for the cause of the KSLSA. But they would earn an “insoluble capital” in terms of vast experience and learning in store for them. In the context of fee and expenditure, there were some wrong notions about advocates and the profession. On the contrary, “Judiciary is the noblest profession. It is a profession that can be termed as “nethara’s nethara” (leaders’ leader) and no other profession is a match to it on various counts,” he said.

Referring to a comprehensive report on the issue of mental health and its legal applications submitted by NIMHANS to the Centre, Mr. Gowda said that the project recommendations should be implemented for establishing mental-legal clinics in all hospitals across the country. The issue of mental health and related legal acts were basically human rights questions that should be dealt with utmost care and competence, he added. The Director of NIMHANS, D. Nagaraja explained the instrumental role he played in conducting a survey of mental health with a perspective, along with 30 scientists, for recommending measures at the behest of the former chairman of the Human Rights Commission and the former Chief Justice of Kerala High Court V.S. Malimath. He said that legalities had a big role to play with the destiny of litigants, who were subjected to mental illness. There were incidents where the law took a different course after the suffering litigants were cured of their illness. Only concerted efforts in that direction would yield desired result, he added.

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