Lok Adalat Meaning & its importance

Justice delayed is justice denied.

• Access to justice for the poor is a constitutional mandate to ensure fair Across the country, a total number of 1,27,87,329 cases were disposed of in four National Lok Adalat, which included a huge number of pending cases i.e., 55,81,117 and a record number of pre-litigation cases i.e., 72,06,212. Through these activities, the Legal Services Authorities disposed off a large number of cases giving relief to the common citizens by ending or preventing long-lasting legal battles. treatment under our legal system.
• Hence, Lok Adalats (literally, ‘People’s Court’) were established to make justice accessible and affordable to all.
• It was a forum to address the problems of crowded case dockets outside the formal adjudicatory system.

Questions that arise about Lok Adalat

• As of now, Lok Adalats have been functioning for 38 years, but have they performed efficiently?
• Do they empower the poor or coerce them to accept unjust compromises?
• Do they trade justice off for high settlement numbers and speed, ignoring the old dictum that justice hurried is justice buried?
• Have we tailored a dual system of justice dispensation, where the formal legal system, i.e., the court, is meant only for the rich and powerful, as was recently stated by former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi?

Background of Lok Adalats

Lok Adalats had existed even before the concept received statutory recognition.

• In 1949, Harivallabh Parikh, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, popularised them in Rangpur, Gujarat.
• The Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 1976, inserted Article 39A to ensure “equal justice and free legal aid”.
• To this end, the Legal Service Authority Act 1987, was enacted by Parliament and it came into force in 1995 “to provide free and competent legal services to weaker sections of the society” and to “organise Lok Adalats to secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity”.

A dispute resolution avenue

• As an alternative dispute resolution tool, Lok Adalats are regularly organised to help parties reach a compromise.
• Motor-accident claims, disputes related to public-utility services, cases related to the dishonour of cheques, and land, labour and matrimonial disputes (except divorce) are usually taken up by Lok Adalats.
• The State Legal Services Authorities (SLAs) have been organising Lok Adalats on a daily, fortnightly and monthly basis.
• Data from the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) show that Lok Adalats organised across the country from 2016 to 2020 disposed of 52,46,415 cases.
  • Similarly, National Lok Adalats (MLAs) organised under the aegis of NALSA settle a huge number of cases across the country in a single day.
  • For instance, NLAs conducted on February 8, 2020, disposed of 11,99,575 cases.
  • From 2016 to 2020, NLAs have disposed of a total of 2,93,19,675 cases.
• The Indian judicial system is often lambasted, perhaps justifiably, for its endemic delays and excessive backlogs.
• As per the National Judicial Data Grid, 16.9% of all cases in district and taluka courts are three to five years old; for High Courts, 20.4% of all cases are five to 10 years old, and over 17% are 10-20 years old.
  • Furthermore, over 66,000 cases are pending before the Supreme Court, over 57 lakh cases before various HCs, and over 3 crore cases are pending before various district and subordinate courts.
• Justice V.V.S. Rao, former judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, calculated a few years ago that it will take around 320 years to clear the existing backlog of cases.
• As a result, litigants are forced to approach Lok Adalats mainly because it is a party-driven process, allowing them to reach an amicable settlement.

Benefits of Lok Adalats

• Lok Adalats offer parties speed of settlement, as cases are disposed of in a single day;
• Procedural flexibility, as there is no strict application of procedural laws such as the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872;
• Economic affordability, as there are no court fees for placing matters before the Lok Adalat;
• Finality of awards, as no further appeal is allowed.
  • This prevents delays in the settlement of disputes.
  • More importantly, the award issued by a Lok Adalat, after the filing of a joint compromise petition, has the status of a civil court decree.

The efficiency of the National Lok Adalat

• As per data from NALSA, subject matter-specific NLAs were organised in 2015 and 2016 on a monthly basis.
• Therefore, each NLA dealt with a specific type of dispute on a single day, each month.
• However, from 2017, this practice was discontinued.
• Thereafter, each NLA has been handling all types of cases on a single day.
• This was done to reduce the costs of organising the NLAs, and more importantly, to allow parties more negotiation time.
• But this, in turn, led to a significant drop in the number of cases settled.
• In 2015 and 2016, ten NLAs were held each year that disposed of 1,83,09,401 and 1,04,98,453 cases respectively.
  • In 2017 and 2018, the number of NLAs dropped to five, with 54,05,867 and 58,79,691 cases settled respectively.
  • In 2019, four NLAs were organised, and they disposed of 52,93,273 cases.
• This throws up questions about the efficiency of NLAs.
• The data show that the average number of cases disposed of per NLA since 2017 has gone up even when the number of NLAs organised each year has reduced.
• This proves that on average, the system is certainly efficient.
• To overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, e-Lok Adalats were organised at both the national and State levels.
• However, the first national e-Lok Adalat was conducted both physically and virtually using videoconferencing tools, and it disposed of 10,42,816 cases.
• But this was less than the average of settled cases in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
  • This suggests that the performance of the NeLA was less efficient than physical National Lok Adalats organised in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who chairs the SC’s e-Committee, recently published the draft of phase three of the e-Courts project. Once implemented, it may prove to be a game-changer in improving the efficiency of the adjudicatory process.

Way forward

• However, besides efficiency and speed, Lok Adalats both online and offline should focus on the quality of justice delivered.
• The Supreme Court, in the State of Punjab vs Jalour Singh (2008), held that a Lok Adalat is purely conciliatory and it has no adjudicatory or judicial function.
• As compromise is its central idea, there is a concern, and perhaps a valid one, that in the endeavour for speedy disposal of cases, it undermines the idea of justice.
• In a majority of cases, litigants are pitted against entities with deep pockets, such as insurance companies, banks, electricity boards, among others.
• In many cases, compromises are imposed on the poor who often have no choice but to accept them.
• In most cases, such litigants have to accept discounted future values of their claims instead of their just entitlements, or small compensations, just to bring a long-pending legal process to an end.
• Similarly, poor women under the so-called ‘harmony ideology’ of the state are virtually dictated by family courts to compromise matrimonial disputes under a romanticised view of marriage. Even a disaster like the Bhopal gas tragedy was coercively settled for a paltry sum, with real justice still eluding thousands of victims.

Conclusion

• A just outcome of a legal process is far more important than expeditious disposal.

India State of Forest Report 2021

Who prepares the India State of Forest Report, 2021?

• ‘India State of Forest Report 2021’ is prepared by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) which has been mandated to assess the forest and tree resources of the country.
• The ISFR-2021 provides information on forest cover, tree cover, mangrove cover, growing stock, carbon stock in India’s forests, forest fire monitoring, forest cover in tiger reserve areas, above ground estimates of biomass using SAR data & climate change hotspots in Indian forests.

Features of India State of Forest Report, 2021

• The total forest and tree cover of the country is 80.9 million hectares which are 24.62 per cent of the geographical area of the country. As compared to the assessment of 2019, there is an increase of 2,261 sq km in the total forest and tree cover of the country.
• Out of this, the increase in the forest cover has been observed as 1,540 sq km and that in tree cover is 721 sq km.
• Very Dense Forest:

1. An increase in forest cover has been observed in the open forest followed by a very dense forest.
2. The top three states showing an increase in forest cover are Andhra Pradesh (647 sq km) followed by Telangana (632 sq km) and Odisha (537 sq km).

• Area-wise Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest cover in the country followed by Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra.
• In terms of forest cover as a percentage of total geographical area, the top five States are Mizoram (84.53%), Arunachal Pradesh (79.33%), and Meghalaya (76.00%), Manipur (74.34%) and Nagaland (73.90%).
• 17 states/UT’s have above 33 % of the geographical area under forest cover. Out of these states and UT’s, five states/UTs namely Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya have more than 75 per cent forest cover while 12 states/UTs namely Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Goa, Kerala, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Assam, Odisha, have forest cover between 33 per cent to 75 per cent.
• Mangrove cover: Total mangrove cover in the country is 4,992 sq km. An increase of 17 sq Km in mangrove cover has been observed as compared to the previous assessment of 2019. The top three states showing mangrove cover increase are Odisha (8 sq km) followed by Maharashtra (4 sq km) and Karnataka (3 sq km).
• Total carbon stock in the country’s forests is estimated to be 7,204 million tonnes and there is an increase of 79.4 million tonnes in the carbon stock of the country as compared to the last assessment of 2019. The annual increase in carbon stock is 39.7 million tonnes.

New Features of India State of Forest Report, 2021

New chapter on Tiger Reserves, Corridors and Lion Conservation Area

• In the present ISFR 2021, FSI has included a new chapter related to the assessment of forest cover in the Tiger Reserves, Corridors and Lion conservation area of India.
• In this context, the decadal assessment of change in forest cover within Tiger Reserves, Corridors and Lion conservation area helps in assessing the impact of conservation measures and management interventions that have been implemented over the years.
• For decadal assessment, change in forest cover, during the period between ISFR 2011 (data period 2008 to 2009) and the current cycle (ISFR 2021, data period 2019-2020) within each Tiger Reserves has been analysed.

Above Ground Biomass (AGB)

• A new initiative of FSI has also been documented in the form of a chapter, where the ‘Above Ground Biomass’ has been estimated.
• FSI, in collaboration with Space Application Centre (SAC), ISRO, Ahmedabad, initiated a special study for estimation of Above Ground Biomass (AGB) at pan-India level, using L- band of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data.
• The results for the States of Assam and Odisha (as well as AGB maps), were presented earlier in ISFR 2019. 
• The interim results for AGB estimates (and AGB maps) for the entire country are being presented as a new chapter in ISFR 2021. The detailed report will be published after the completion of the study.

Mapping of Climate Change Hotspots in Indian Forests

• FSI in collaboration of with Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani, Goa Campus has performed a study based on ‘Mapping of Climate Change Hotspots in Indian Forests’.
• The collaborative study was carried out with the objective to map the climatic hotspots over the forest cover in India, using computer model-based projection of temperature and rainfall data, for the three future time periods i.e. years 2030, 2050 and 2085.
• The report also contains information on various parameters State/UT wise.

Special Thematic Maps on Forest Cover

• Special thematic information on forest covers such as a hill, tribal districts, and northeastern region has also been given separately in the report.
• It is expected that the information given in the report would provide valuable information for policy, planning and sustainable management of forest and tree resources in the country.

Methodology to measure India State of Forest Report, 2021

• In tune with the Government of India’s vision of digital India and the need for integration of digital data sets, FSI has adopted using the vector boundary layers of various administrative units up to the districts level as provided by the Survey of India along with digital open series topo sheets, in order to ensure comprehensive compatibility with the geographical areas as reported in Census, 2011.
• The biennial assessment of forest cover of the country using mid-resolution Satellite data is based on the interpretation of LISS-III data from Indian Remote Sensing satellite data (Resources at-II) with a spatial resolution of 23.5 meters with a scale of interpretation 1:50,000 to monitor forest cover and forest cover changes at District, State and National level.
• This information provides inputs for various global level inventories, reports such as GHG Inventory, Growing Stock, Carbon Stock, Forest Reference Level (FRL) and international reporting to UNFCCC targets under CBD Global Forest Resource Assessment (GFRA) for planning and scientific management of forests.
• Satellite data for the entire country was procured from NRSC for the period October to December 2019. The satellite data interpretation is followed by rigorous ground-truthing. Information from other collateral sources is also used to improve the accuracy of the interpreted image.

Click here to read the India State of Forest Report, 2019