Kolkata: Family Courts were set up over a decade back to act as instruments of redressal for women facing discrimination within the family.

But meagre funds, lack of monitoring mechanism and absence of 'sensitised' judges and counsellors have rendered them vestigial to the legal system.

Women's rights experts are wary with the way 34 Family Courts in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal have been functioning -- without giving much credence to the very ideals upon which they were set up.

"In order that women are not subjected to harassment in regular civil and criminal courts due to legal delays, women's movement had raised the demand for setting up of Family Courts in the country. But these institutions have failed to serve their purpose in the long run," says Jasodhara Bagchi chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for Women (WBCW).

The problem, she says, lies in the root.

For one, the Preamble of the Family Courts, a Central legislation enacted in 1984, did not contextualise women, but emphasised that the family as an institution needed to be saved. "This absence of the centrality of women's needs has manifested in the actual organisation of the Family Courts," Bagchi says.

Flavia Agnes, eminent legal scholar and practicing advocate of the Mumbai High Court has just completed a national study on the functioning of the Family Courts and published the first part of the research on the two courts of West Bengal.

"Judges approaching retirement are appointed to the Family Courts, for which the retirement age is 62. The postings are viewed as a humanitarian service to the district level judges at the end of their career. Whom are we intending to do a service to -- women or judges?" Agnes asks.

Sensitisation of the judges prior to their appointment is also a major issue, Agnes, an activist in the area of gender-just jurisprudence, says.

"How do the judges cope with these changes from the system they are used to, in regular civil and criminal courts? Well set in adversarial pattern of dispute resolution, how do they adapt to the needs of emotionally laden arena of family disputes, crucial rights of women and domestic violence?" she points out.

The Family Courts in West Bengal are assigned a lower position within the court hierarchy by situating them within the magistrate court complex at its near end in a dilapidated portion.

"This defeats the purpose for which Family Courts have been set up -- to shift the litigation foray away from the regular criminal and civil courts," Bagchi points out.

Though Maharashtra enjoys a high budgetary allocation of over Rs 31 lakh per court (it has 16 courts), West Bengal allocates a dismal Rs 7.4 lakh to each of its two courts.

"Unless this is posed as a preliminary concern and rectified, the condition of the Family Courts of the State can not improve," Agnes says.