“Justice at the doorstep” is going to translate into reality with the first full-fledged mobile court in the country being established in a remote and backward corner of Haryana.

“It will be the launching of the concept of ‘Reaching the Unreached’.

The court-on-wheels will serve the purpose of making delivery of justice cost effective by reaching out to the marginal sections of society”, Justice Vijender Jain, Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High court told reporters here on Friday.

Justice Jain said the concept of mobile court may prove to be a precursor to the grand plans of the Centre seeking setting up gram nyayalayas at village level in the country with the aim to provide access to justice at the grass root level. The issue is being currently debated by the Parliament through the tabling of the Gram Nyayalayas Bill 2007.

Punhana town in the backward Mewat region of Haryana will become the first town in the country to have a mobile court.

It will be inaugurated on August 4 by the Chief Justice of India, Mr K G Balakrishnan.

Three other townships in the Mewat region will be catered to by the mobile court to be manned by a judicial officer and ten-member staff who will hold proceedings in a mobile bus four-times in a week. The mobile court will cater to a population of 65,000 in this backward region which has an abysmal female literacy rate of three percent and male literarcy rate of 35 percent. Poor road connectivity and irregular transport had been posing great hardships to people living in far-flung areas in the region to have easy access to courts.

Justice Jain who was flanked by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Hooda described it as an “epoch-making beginning” saying the experiment would be replicated in other remote parts of Haryana if proved successful. Hooda said the government had provided Rs 50 lakh for setting up the court.

Justice Jain said mobile courts would help in faster decision-making for people living in the vicinity.

Functioning like any regular court, the mobile court will receive complaints, civil and criminal applications, grant bails or remand accused to custody, receive police reports, record evidence, pronounce judgments and decrees, pass sentences and commit convicts to prison.

Talking about ever-increasing list of pending cases before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Jain said the court had aimed to settle all fresh cases within two years after clearing the backlog of cases pending with the court for over ten years.

“we aim to clear the backlog of all civil cases pending beyond ten years within a year. All the criminal cases which have lingered for over five years will be cleared-off in next two years”, Justice Jain said.