A birth certificate issuing programme has been included in the Lok Adalat scheduled to be held in Mysuru on December 18.
At a press conference in Mysuru on Monday, Principal District and Sessions Court Judge M.L. Raghunath said the Mysuru District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) had found that thousands of children studying in schools in the district did not possess birth certificates.
The DLSA through its panel of advocates and legal volunteers had already begun distributing application forms for issue of birth certificates in schools, mostly in rural areas. The school authorities will have to give the application forms to the parents of the children, who did not possess their birth records, and have them filled up.
The application forms will be registered and notices will be issued to the jurisdictional births and deaths registration officer, who will come to the Lok Adalat and take steps to issue the birth certificates.
The coming Lok Adalat, scheduled to be held at Malalavadi court complex, is part of the national Lok Adalat programme to be held all across the country.
The District Principal and Sessions Court judge also said that DLSA had set a target of resolving 40,000 cases during the event by identifying motor vehicle accident cases, cheque bounce cases registered under the Negotiable Instruments Act, land acquisition cases, marital and domestic dispute cases, compoundable criminal cases and other civil cases like partition suits, injunction suits etc.
More than one lakh cases were pending in Mysuru and all pending cases as well as pre-litigation cases will be taken up, the judge said while calling up upon the litigants to resolve their disputes through mediation, counselling and conciliation at the Lok Adalat.
The DLSA, as part of the Pan India Outreach programme, had launched a legal awareness programme in all the villages of the district and covered about 80 per cent of the district. The remaining 20 per cent will be covered this week.
The last Lok Adalat saw about 19,500 disputes being resolved. During the previous three Lok Adalats, about 80 couples, who had applied for divorce, were re-united and the DLSA was hoping to resolve 20 more such cases in the coming programme.
