Telangana’s Legal Aid Clinics: For the first time in India, the judiciary is attempting to move forward in a comprehensive manner in order to provide a single tool to the farmer to combat the numerous challenges he encounters while producing food for all of us. And it was in Telangana that the seed for this historic movement was planted, which is now poised to proliferate throughout India. The intention is to establish Agri Legal Aid Clinics, which will be operated under the auspices of the state legal services authority by legal volunteers trained at Nalsar University in all land, agricultural, and farming laws. These volunteers will investigate the issue, identify the perpetrator, and then force the farmer to file a lawsuit to protect his rights.
According to the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act of 2001, if a farmer suffers a financial loss as a result of spurious seeds, he can sue the seed company in consumer court for deficient service and demand compensation. Similarly, the farmer can rely on the law when he encounters problems with fertilisers and pesticides, as there are laws pertaining to fertilisers. There are laws governing the marketing of agricultural products as well.
On the subject of land rights and tenancy, numerous laws exist. When confronted with a problem, a farmer will be incapable of deciphering and analysing it in order to apply the applicable law and obtain a resolution. This is where legal aid clinics, trained volunteers, and LSA judges would step in to reign in the errant parties in order to expedite the delivery of justice to the farmer, either through regular courts or primarily through lok adalats, following detailed deliberations with the relevant parties.
Telangana’s Legal Aid Clinics For Farmers May Soon Become a Pan India Model
In February 2023, Justice P Naveen Rao, the executive chairman of the Telangana state legal services authority (TSLSA), learned of the concept of a legal aid clinic from M Suneel Kumar, the founder of the Legal Empowerment and Assistance for Farmers Society (LEAFS) and the Hyderabad-based Nalsar Law University, and enlisted the assistance of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan to immediately launch the Agri Legal Aid Clinic Scheme (ALACS) in the state. In March 2023, three Supreme Court justices, Justice V Ramasubramanian, Justice Sanjay Kumar, and Justice PS Narasimha, travelled to the state to launch it in Bammera village in the Janagoan district, the birthplace of the 15th century Telugu poet Bammera Pothana, who translated the epic Maha Bhagavatham from Sanskrit to Telugu.
The concept was an immediate hit and is spreading throughout the state. In the last three months, as many as seventy of these institutions have been established throughout Telangana, and many more regions are moving forward. Despite the fact that the legal services authorities have served the public through a variety of programmes for the impoverished and the marginalised, there has been no programme designed specifically for farmers until now.
This is likely the reason why the National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) and its current executive chairman, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, also showed a keen interest in the initiative and contacted Telangana LSA for more information. This idea from Telangana is anticipated to be discussed at the NLSA’s All-India meeting, which begins on 30 June in Srinagar, J&K. S Goverdhan Reddy, the member secretary of TLSLA, speculated that this programme may become a pan-Indian model in the near future and will save tens of thousands of farmers across the nation.
Justice Naveen Rao, who took over the agri-legal aid clinics, is known as the digital judge and has established a reputation as a judicial authority committed to achieving a synthesis of law and technology. He has taken innovative measures to steer the Telangana Judiciary into the digital age. He played a pivotal role in the digitization of court records and the installation of display monitors to show the case status in each court in real time and make the information available on the internet.
For a few months, he held court using only digital documents to evaluate the attorneys’ preparedness to participate in digital court proceedings. It was the first electronic court of its kind among India’s high courts. Under his stewardship, Telangana became the first state to appoint legal aid defence counsel in each of its 33 districts to assist those who cannot afford a private defence attorney in the trial courts. This was also consistent with the NLSA’s mandate for all state legal services authorities.
