Ranchi, Oct. 12: When Dhanbad district judge said that over 22,000 petitions were filed with the mobile court in September, Justice Altamas Kabir of the Supreme Court could not believe his ears.

Inaugurating the website of Jharkhand State Legal Services Authority (Jhalsa), the brains trust behind the “justice on wheels” initiative that’s drawing huge crowds in the districts it has so far toured, Justice Kabir would have perhaps dismissed district judge Ambuj Nath’s claim as exaggeration had they not been on a video-conferencing link with Dhanbad on Saturday.

“The grievances against the government machinery are so deep that people in villages do not want to leave us till their petitions are heard. All these cases were pre-litigation public grievance redress cases,” Nath explained to the senior judges, including Jharkhand Chief Justice Gyan Sudha Misra, who couldn’t hide her surprise too.

“Are people pinning more faith on alternative dispute redress mechanisms like justice on wheels than the conventional court?” she said.

Nath said more than conventional court cases — around 80 were settled in a month — the mobile court worked wonders while addressing grievances of poor villagers concerning various lacunae in the implementation of welfare schemes, like those under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Indira Awas Yojana.

This apart, disputes centred around welfare of parents or Prevention of Witch Practices Act etc, were common to the mobile court, which, Nath believed, was a big draw for the people because of the involvement of Jhalsa that has ensured the absence of middlemen, a common irritant in matters of jurisprudence in remote areas.

“The applications received in Dhanbad were forwarded to the authorities concerned with a deadline that they disposed of within a fortnight,” Nath pointed out.

When it was launched, the mobile court received a huge response in Dumka with as many as 11,500 petitions being filed in 21 days between July 21 and July 31, and August 16 and August 25.

The success of the justice on wheels initiative and a lot more are featured in the Jhalsa website that was launched by Justice Kabir on Saturday. A virtual storehouse of information on the judiciary, it also details progress of alternative judicial mechanisms like lok adalat, mediation and conciliation in Jharkhand over the years.

In the state, mediation-cum conciliation centres were functioning at Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Hazaribagh and Bokaro.

The website points out that Jhalsa, in association with the state’s “Continuing Education Programme”, has opened law libraries in as many as 1,054 villages in Ranchi district where these had been stocked with books in Hindi and local languages Ho, Panchpargania, Urdu and Oraon.

“The website is in the initial stages. More vital information remains to be uploaded,” said Justice M.Y. Eqbal, the executive chairman of Jhalsa. The activities of legal awareness camps, he said, would be monitored and ultimately people would be able be lodge their complaints on the website.

“A data base of undertrials and convicts lodged in jails and status of legal aid provided to them will also be uploaded and monitored directly by Jhalsa,” he added.

Eqbal expressed confidence that more and more people would start utilising the facilities on offer, making legal service authorities more accountable and their functioning more transparent.