Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Saturday urged legal services institutions to treat justice not as a distant promise but as a daily practice rooted in dialogue, dignity and inclusion, as he inaugurated the West Zone Regional Conference of the National Legal Services Authority in Indore.
Addressing judges, judicial officers, legal-aid counsels and paralegal volunteers gathered for the two-day conference themed “Enhancing Access To Justice: United Voice, Stronger Tomorrow,” the CJI said the three words of the theme were “not slogans for a banner” but the working definition of effective legal aid. “Legal Aid looks like people spoken to and not merely spoken at, treated as citizens and not mere case numbers, and reached wherever they are, rather than expected to find their own way to us,” he said.
Drawing on Indore’s own history, the CJI recalled Lokmata Ahilyabai Holkar, who held open court almost daily to hear farmers, widows and traders directly, without intermediaries. “What made her administration remarkable was not merely that justice was delivered, but that it was accessible – the very standard this Conference asks us to reach,” he noted.
Laying out the first pillar, Dialogue, the CJI said access to justice begins with conversation. Every legal aid application starts with someone narrating a problem, and every awareness programme succeeds only when institutions first understand ground realities.
For NALSA, he added, dialogue must run from the National Authority to the paralegal volunteer “who stands closest to the community”. A united voice, he said, emerges not when everyone says the same thing, but when everyone works toward the same objective while responding to local needs. That diversity was especially relevant in the West Zone, he observed.
“The legal needs of a tribal family in Madhya Pradesh, a fisherfolk community in Goa, a migrant worker in Gujarat or a woman seeking legal assistance in Mumbai are unlikely to be identical. Our response, therefore, cannot be uniform,” he said.
On Dignity, the CJI stressed that respect is experienced in small acts: a legal aid lawyer listening patiently, a volunteer explaining law in simple words, a judicial officer ensuring courtesy in court.
The Legal Services Authorities Act, he said, treats support for vulnerable sections “not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of constitutional entitlement”. The final pillar, Inclusion, the CJI said, was the hardest test. “The real test of an institution is not how well it serves those who are able to reach it, but how effectively it reaches those who never can.”
Citing progress, he pointed to Tele-Law’s over one crore pre-litigation consultations, the Nyaya Bandhu platform connecting pro bono advocates, and mobile legal aid clinics reaching remote and tribal areas.
The goal, he said, is to ensure “justice travels to the citizen, rather than expecting the citizen always to travel to justice”. In his concluding remarks, the CJI urged West Zone states to move “beyond principle into practice” with concrete frameworks and better coordination.
Addressing paralegal volunteers in particular, he said the promise of Article 39A “lives equally in your hands” and will matter only if it “reaches the household it was meant for”.“A stronger tomorrow is not something we wait for; it is something we are, even now, in the process of building,” he said, before concluding with “Jai Hind”. The conference was convened by NALSA and the Madhya Pradesh State Legal Services Authority.
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