Late Justice Niranjan Pandya was initially directly appointed as District Judge in Junagadh.
He made an experiment of Permanent Lok Adalat to settle cases pending in Court as well as about cases not yet filed in Court
He persuaded Local Post Office to spare a Room for this purpose. A permanent Lok Adalat was set up there.
If a man or woman had a dispute, whether pending in Court or not, could apply here.
On his application, notice was issued to respondent and case was fixed on a Sunday after a week.
On that day, the District Judge, two eminent and top Lawyers of District Court and two eminent charitable well known citizens of city will sit as 5 Judge bench to resolve disputes.
There will be other Lawyers to help parties.
If parties agree, a compromise would be drawn up which will be sent to Court where it would become decree of Court.
Where respondents do not come or where no compromise was possible, the case was dropped. The parties however left with clear understanding of law and possible outcome of their case.
The expanses of Permanent Lok Adalat were probably met from charity of locally influential charitable men who used to get chance to sit in 5 Judge bench of Lok Adalat.
Success of Lok Adalat depend on their influence, plus persuasive powers of District Judge and top Lawyers of city who sat on 5 Judge Bench.
Lawyers at first did not like this idea.
But then they saw chance of interacting with future litigants who may fail to compromise. This motivated them to participate happily in this project.
After Judge left city, after few years, the project was closed.
I am not sure whether such project is working anywhere else at present.
Haresh Raichura 19/11/16
