Sunil Mittal to take Rs 5 cr pay cut to provide legal aid for first-time undertrials

New Delhi: Bharti Enterprises will launch a legal aid service to provide assistance to first-time undertrials languishing in jails for minor offences and its Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal will contribute Rs 5 crore from his own salary to fund the initiative.

'Nyaya Bharti', which will start with Rs 10 crore funding from Bharti, will help the undertrials at district court-level by paying bail and surety amounts.

"To start with, we will roll out Nyaya Bharti in the Delhi-NCR and Punjab and add more states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana and Rajasthan. Bharti Airtel will contribute Rs 10 crore each year as part of CSR for this project," said Mittal, the Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, that owns India's biggest private telecom operator Bharti Airtel.

Mittal said half of the funding, or Rs 5 crore, will come from the salary he draws.

He drew a salary of Rs 27.17 crore in 2014-15.

The initiative, for which young lawyers will be roped in to pour into thousands of cases of languishing undertrials, bring them to a screening committee and provide them legal defence, including bail bonds, is aimed at being rolled out by April 1, 2016.

"It is estimated that there are over 280,000 undertrials in 1,387 jails in India, constituting nearly 68 percent of the total prisoner population," he said, adding only first time offenders charged with minor offences will be taken up.

The proportion of undertrials is amongst the world's ten worst and many of the undertrials have been in custody for periods longer than the prison term had they been convicted.

Mittal said the idea of launching the legal aid service, besides Bharti's education and sanitation initiative under CSR, came to him during his visits to Patiala court for his case.

"Most undertrials suffer in jails simply because of their ignorance of the law and their rights to liberty, their inability to pay the meagre amounts required for bails and bonds and lack of persons to stand surety," he said.

Under Nyaya Bharti, a screening committee of independent persons will be set up that will identify the cases that need to be taken up.

It will work under the aegis of Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises, and will have a separate Governing Board.

Former Chief Justice of India A S Anand will be the chairman of the Governing Board.

Other members of the 12-member Board include former Solicitor General Harish N Salve and senior counsel Maninder Singh and Sanjaya Baru, who was media advisor to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Mittal and his brother Rakesh Bharti Mittal too would be on the board.

"We are making a small start with Nyaya Bharti and hope more people, in particular, from the legal fraternity and corporate India will come forward to support this noble cause," Mittal said.

Under CSR, Bharti Enterprises will spend about Rs 100 crore a year on building schools and toilets and running Nyaya Bharti.

When asked if he is looking to get into politics as he

once desired, Mittal said, "Yes, you are right once upon a time there was a thought in my mind but that was long years back but that is not my aspiration at this point of time."

Talking about CSR spending target of 2 percent as mandated under the Companies Act, Mittal said the group will be able to meet the target by the end of next financial year.

He said that company has earmarked Rs 100 crore on sanitation programme in the next three years which it will now complete in two years.

"So it would come to around Rs 45-50 crore a year. On education, we are spending Rs 50 crore annually in 254 schools. Across 140 schools we are also augmenting the infrastructure. In next two years we will be spending around Rs 60 crore on capital expenditure," Mittal said.

He said that the company plans to set up a university in North India, around Punjab and Haryana, depending upon the availability of land.

He said that there is lot need to be done in all the areas and going forward the company will look at expanding CSR activities but need to focus on specific goal initially.

"If we put all three initiative together, spend will be Rs 100 crore and depending upon profit it will go up to Rs 140-150 crore," Mittal said.