Orissa State Legal Services Authority - Legal Literacy Club
Amartya Bag
Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100803/jsp/orissa/story_12760649.jsp
OUR CORRESPONDENT
The building of the Orissa State Legal Services in Cuttack. Picture by Badrika Nath Das Cuttack, Aug. 2: Students in the state will soon be legally aware.
Legal literacy clubs will soon be formed in all high schools of the state. The Orissa State Legal Services Authority plans to set up these clubs in 5,000 odd high schools by the end of the month. The aim of forming the clubs is to help children spread legal awareness among people at the grassroots level.
The clubs are part of an initiative taken by the legal services authority to involve students and the younger generation in legal education and make them legally literate.
“The aim of forming the clubs is to promote legal literacy among students and enable them to spread their knowledge to other sections of the society,” the member-secretary of the legal services authority, S. Pujari, told The Telegraph today.
The legal services authority plans to set up the clubs in all the 5,000 odd high schools by the end of August. Setting up the clubs is part of an ongoing programme by the authority under the National Literacy Mission to spread legal awareness.
According to officials at the legal services authority here, the district legal service authorities and legal service committees at the taluk level, in coordination with the school and mass education department officials, have already begun the process of forming the clubs in their respective areas.
“In fact, we have already formed the clubs in 4,200 high schools. We hope to form clubs in the rest of the schools by the end of this month. The legal literacy clubs in all the schools across the state will be formally opened on September 5,” Pujari said.
The clubs will have as its members a minimum of 15 students from Classes VIII and IX.
The maximum number of members is restricted to 25. The headmaster of the various schools will nominate a teacher who will head the club.
The authority will provide the clubs with necessary stationery and nominate a lawyer as the resource person. The members will be briefed about the salient features of important laws so that they are made aware of various poverty alleviation programmes.
Lawyers feel these clubs will eventually help educate the rural poor and also the middle class in legal issues.
“By involving the student community in dissemination of information, we hope to take legal literacy campaign down to the grassroots,” said advocate Gokulananda Patnaik, a member of the High Court Bar.
“The club members could be encouraged to identify persons in their neighbourhood who deserved legal aid and who are in need of protecting their rights conferred by the law. Neglected groups in the society stand to gain by this,” Patnaik added.
Amartya Bag
B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) in IP Laws (4th Year)
KIIT Law School, KIIT University
Bhubaneswar - 24, Orissa, India
Ph: +91-9692742782
shamnad basheer
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel
