BU to provide online legal education facility

Barkatullah University (BU) has drawn up an ambitious scheme to provide online legal education and counseling services to people. The university will seek support of government for total success of the scheme.

Giving details about the new scheme, Dr MK Srivastava, Department Head, Law, BU, said people residing in rural areas
lacked legal education knowledge and they cannot spend much money for getting a counseling facility from legal experts. 

The new scheme of the Department of Law will definitely help rural people in a big way to get counseling and advice on legal issues through online services, Srivastava said. He added that what people needed are computers and, of course, an Internet connection to avail of online legal services of BU.

He hoped that online legal education facility would help people to educate themselves on issues related to legal matters and human rights. To a question on what prompted the University to provide online services, Srivastava said that a lack of knowledge among rural people about human rights and on legal matters were the basic idea behind the scheme.

On being quizzed about how he would provide legal education to the rural populace, Srivastava said that the Department of Law would seek help from the Government of Madhya Pradesh as it has provided computers to people at the Panchayat level with an Internet facility.

The law department of BU has decided to take legal education to the doorstep of rural masses by launching online legal education and consultancy program. The idea is to provide online legal education with special focus on requirements of rural people and extending the trend of decentralization of power till village level.

Apart from this, the law department is planning to establish legal education centers at various colleges and universities with help from the Information Technology development. Under the online legal education program, Law Department of BU would create a website with comprehensive details about laws pertaining to Panchayati Raj, Land Dispute and Laws related to human rights.

People will be offered consultancy on various legal matters and Constitutional rights of Panchayats and other organizations operating at the village level. Dr Srivastava also said that the plans are at the formative stage and they are looking for infrastructure facilities to realism them. Srivastava added that presently Academy of Administration has the required infrastructure facilities arid they had discussed the plans with the Academy authorities for joining them. He added that they might also provide some assistance to the Academy by providing updated information about laws required for bureaucrats in day-to-day working.

Dr Srivastava said that the idea of online legal education would also result in use of new researches and orders in the field of law by the public. In addition to this, the department is also planning to link various universities and colleges of the state in the field of law education. Srivastava said that they are planning to provide lectures, of top law experts to these colleges through CDs, which would benefit the law students.

(CNS)