Aims to promote peaceful, inclusive societies for sustainable development
Our Correspondent
Kohima | September 1
The Nagaland Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Vision 2030 in its Goal-16 on “Peace, justice and strong institutions” aim to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Its vision stated that by 2030, “reduce all forms of violence and violent deaths as well as ensure equal justice for all.”
2030 targets includes; reduce proportion of crime against women against total crime reported to 2 percent by 2030, reduce proportion of crime against children to 0.16 per cent per 1,00,000 population by 2030, reduce number of murder cases significant by 2030 and reduce cases of corruption.
CHALLENGES:
Long pending cases
More often than not, courts are burdened with long pending cases that bring about greater inefficiencies in dispensing justice. Fast-track courts and e-courts must be encouraged to enable speedy delivery of justice. Alongside these measures, the Lok Adalat system must be further strengthened and made more efficient and Para Legal Volunteers (PLVs) must be well-equipped in order to improve justice delivery.
Lack of adequate community participation
Local communities can play a significant role in policing so as to encourage decentralization, giving greater power to common man. Assam’s community Policing programme, wherein Nagarik Samities were brought within the ambit of the institutional framework to cover all the police stations and out-posts in the state is a suitable example of how community participation is possible.
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS:
Awareness generation
Extending “Police ke Pathshala’ programme to higher secondary education institutions and colleges as well as similarly, expanding the legal literacy programmes is essential.
The latter has seen a major drop from 2017/2018 to 2018/2019 and this needs to be addressed since such programmes are essential in order to ensure greater knowledge among civilians and legal issues and institutional mechanism to help them in case they require assistance.
Nagaland already has two structure programmes in order to create awareness on promotion of justice for all and reduction of violence by enhancing safety measures. These must be leveraged to the fullest and expanded further to help achieve the larger target of reduction in crime rate among women, children and justice for all.
Strengthening law enforcement machinery
In order to achieve the state level target of no intentional homicide, ending all forms of violence at large, the state will continue to invest in making the police force more robust.
A first step has been taken by upgrading the STF and giving them specialized training and the e-patrol system for the police. These initiatives should continue and the focus must be on quick resolution of criminal cases and prosecution of offenders.
Participation of women in dispensing justice and ensuring safety
Greater participation by women would help create greater positive impact by making the police and legal system more accessible for women. Recruiting more women judges and advocates as well as having more women-run police station would help in increasing their participation in the institutional system.
e-First Information Report
To introduce a digital platform like e-FIR to facilitate convenience, improve efficiency and provide easier access. This will enhance the accountability of the police personnel. The platform will be further integrated with other services such as payment of traffic fines, filling of lost report, checking complaint status, reporting of missing or stolen mobile phones, application for police clearance certificates and tenant/domestic help verification etc.
e-Courts programme
An electronic court means a location in which matters of law are adjudicated upon in the presence of qualified judge(s) and which has a well –developed technical infrastructure.
The e-courts project is about leveraging technology to enable courts to make justice delivery systems affordable and cost-effective. This would be beneficial for both improving the court processes and rendering citizen centric services. The primary intension of e-courts is to make the justice delivery system affordable, transparent, speedy and accountable by limiting the paper filings.
While the GoI is taking steps towards implementing this initiative across the country, the state must push for this change at the earliest as it will help in resource and cost efficiencies.
Ensuring justice, peace and strong institutions require multi-pronged approaches that run across the police force for ensuring greater safety and the legal system to ensure equal access to justice, the vision statement stated.
Current status in Nagaland
• Against a total of 1, 802 cases registered both under IPC and various local and special laws in the state in 2019, only 86 cases pertain to crime against women
• For the same period, 50 cases pertain to crime against children
• In 2019, 23 murder cases were reported
• Full-fledged women police stations functioning in all the districts.
