Adv. N S Govind, Mar Gregorios College of Law, Thiruvananthapuram
Origin
Right to appoint a pleader as a substantive right is of recent origin as compared to it being a procedural right. Considering the helplessness of the parties in procedural matters, the right to appoint pleaders were provided by both civil and procedural codes. Besides the Bombay High Court, it is the 14th Law Commission report which viewed that legal aid does not deserve to be casted away as mere question of procedure. Rather it deserves a fair treatment as a fundamental right. The Legal Aid Committee of the International Commission of Jurists, held at Delhi in 1958, demanded implementation of free legal aid at the Third All-India Law Conference in 1962. Pursuant to this, the Law ministry published Outline of a Scheme for Legal Aid to the Poor in 1960 and called a meeting of law ministers of various states to discuss on the topic, which viewed financial burden as one of the hinderances. In 1970, the Institute of Constitutional & Parliamentary studies convened the National Conference on Legal Aid; the recommendations made the government to introduce an amendment to the Advocates Act2. Later on, an expert committee chaired by Mr. V R Krishna Iyer J.3 which beautifully described that the consumers of justice includes those who have lost their tongues. In 1976 the Central Government appointed another committee of Justice P.N. Bhagwati, as Chairman to establish legal service programme in all the states. After 4 years of the 48th Law Commission report which also recognised legal-aid as a right, Article 39 A was incorporated. The effect of golden- triad4 brought a new deviation. Later the PIL instituted by Advocate Pushpa Kapila Hingorani regarding the unjustified incarceration of undertrial prisoners, the Supreme Court observed that failure to provide free legal aid could vitiate the trial and also is a violation of Article 21,5.6 The judicial attitude towards legal aid was further expanded in Khathri & Ors. v. State of Bihar & Ors.7, Sheela Barse v. State of Maharashtra.8 Meanwhile In 1980, a committee at the national level was constituted to oversee and supervise legal aid programmes throughout the country chaired by Mr. P.N. Bhagwati J., which later came to be known as CILAS(Committee for Implementing Legal Aid Schemes). The Legal Services Authorities Act was enacted in 1987 to replace CILAS.
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