THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, March 5: The first National Lok Adalat of 2024 will be held on March 9.
Principal District and Sessions Judge Niraj Kumar Srivastav held a press briefing, which his battery of senior judicial officers joined.
It aims to achieve far higher in terms of the settlement of cases done in the fourth and last National Lok Adalat held in 2023.
The target of 25,000 cases
This time, the target is to dispose of 25,000 cases, including pending civil cases. Two of the 11 benches will be steered by lady judicial officers.
The principal district and sessions judge was very particular about cases brought to the National Lok Adalat by the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, popularly known as consumer court.
Consumer disputes
Secretary of the District Legal Services Authority Arpit Shrivastava attended the press briefing and informed the audience that cases of consumer disputes in the redressal forum reached the National Lok Adalat.
Two Es have a lot of compoundable cases. These 2Es are the electricity and excise departments. Their cases are numerous.
Forest cases, too, come in large numbers. But it is the pre-litigation matters that take Lok Adalat to Delta.
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Special mediation drive
The principal district and sessions judge said a family matter mediation drive will be from March 11 to 16.
He said, “This mediation drive will offer online and offline services. Suppose either of the two family disputants or both are away from here and inclined to resolve their disputes. In that case, the family disputants can appear in the mediation drive either virtual or physically.”
The mediation drive deals with restitution of conjugal rights, judicial separation, dissolution of marriage, declaration of matrimonial status, child custody, divorce, alimony or spousal support, property division and domestic violence.
The principal district and sessions judge said, “Our aim and objective remain pure and pious in making husband and wife live in peace and understanding. If any of them have a different view of life, like living separately, we also see that post-separation, there is no hatred or malice for any side. Nursing grudge after separation serves no purpose.”
Rampant poppy cultivation
When the attention of the principal district and sessions judge was drawn towards the rampant poppy cultivation and menace of drugs, he said, “We are seriously contemplating holding an awareness camp right on the plot of land where poppy was cultivated and destroyed later by the police just to make the locals residing near the plot of poppy land or in contiguity of it as to what ill effects poppy cultivation brings in to them or their families.”
He said, “There are narcotic cases where people have remained in jail for around one and a half years. I want to take down such people (on bail) to the poppy spot to tell people there how this banned crop has ruined their lives and why they should not fall for it in their interest of life and living.”
The principal district and sessions judge agreed there is a well-knit network that takes care of the legal consequences of the parties caught by police in narcotic cases, leaving people of lesser gods to their fate.
The network is desperate to seek fast legal measures for big faces of poppy cultivation in judicial custody, overlooking those who matter well in the cultivation of poppy most.
To a query that no case is ever made out against any of the officials of the forest department on whose plot of the land poppy is cultivated, which is a 2-month long process and forest officials remain blissfully unseated to it, on most of the occasions deliberately thus extending covert support to the poppy growers the principal district and sessions judge said, “The forest officials draw cases only. Police also draw cases. That’s the ground reality.”
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