Government sends over 90 names to SC for HC judgeship

The government has sent to the Supreme Court names of over 90 candidates recommended for elevation to High Court judgeship by various State High Courts. Among others, these include names of eight lawyers recommended by the collegium of Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Meanwhile, the Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today underlined the need for pro-bono lawyering by lawyers to ensure that the impoverished are benefited. He reiterated that providing “significant” free legal aid by lawyers to the needy needs to be made an integral component of the selection criteria for elevation to higher judiciary.

Prasad was speaking at the launch event of two applications: mobile application and dashboard and Nyaya Bandhu mobile application.


He said in an endeavour to encourage social service among law fraternity, the collegium should consider introducing provision for getting preference in appointment as judge if the advocate has substantive credit of providing pro-bono service.

The Law Minister announced that the services of “tele-law” will now be expanded across the country. Prasad said a pilot project in this regard has proved useful and more than 50,000 affected people have already availed this service in the States of UP, Bihar and J&K.

Stating that “a mass movement” is needed to create awareness about tele-law, Prasad said that in order to promote the expansion and penetration of tele-law online legal advice and consultation in the far flung and remote corners in the entire country, a mobile application has been developed for Para Legal Volunteers (PLVs).

This mobile application will enable the PLVs to perform on field pre – registration of cases with a facility to seek appointment from the Panel lawyer on preferred date and time, in coordination with Village Level entrepreneur (VLE) at the common service centre (CSC).

He said the application will benefit 73,000 PLVs of National Legal Service Authority and State Legal Services Authorities (SLSA) in the country who will be associated under Tele-Law service.

This mobile application is integrated with a Dashboard created to confirm and register the pre-registered cases, to enable online interface between the beneficiary and the panel lawyer stationed at SLSAs through video conferencing and telephone facility available at each CSC and to measure the progress of advice enabled to the beneficiary, to all its key stakeholders that include Department of Justice (DoJ), CSC- e Governance Services India.