Lapsed: Rs 135 crore Central funds for state’s judiciary

The performance audit on implementation of initiatives in judicial system revealed the state did not avail itself of Central assistance.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state has under-utilised the Finance Commission grant leading to lapse of major funds, said the CAG report on General and Social sector tabled in the Assembly on Monday. The performance audit on implementation of initiatives in judicial system revealed the state did not avail itself of Central assistance of `134.91 crore under the Centrally-sponsored scheme for the development of infrastructure facilities for judiciary.

• Evening courts could not be set up as planned and the establishment of Special Judicial First Class Magistrate Courts was delayed. Against a target of 116 evening courts, the state government could set up only 5 of the 74 proposed courts.
• Failure by the government to issue orders to include direct recruitment as one of the modes of appointment of court managers resulted in the delay in appointment and restricted their services to the period 2014-15 to 2016-17.
• Failure to set up adequate alternate dispute resolution centres resulted in poor utilisation of funds leading to lapse of grants to the tune of `13.31 crore.
• Clearance of cases filed in the Lok Adalats was lower than the target set by the 13th Finance Commission.
• The high-level monitoring committee’s request to expand the base of beneficiaries among the marginalised sections by enhancing the income limit to get legal aid was not complied with by Kerala State Legal Services Authority.
• The state availed only `43.09 crore against an allocation of `140.05 crore by the 13th Finance Commission on improvement of Justice Delivery Mechanism thereby foregoing assistance of `96.96 crore.  
• Though the government issued administrative sanction for the establishment of 27 special judicial first class magistrate courts, it was done only during the last months of the Finance Commission award.