This programme brought together 39 women, 35 men, and 23 lawyers (8 women, 15 men) from 19 districts of Tamil Nadu to strengthen monitoring mechanisms in Tamil Nadu under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

🔑 Core Act:
📌 Understanding the Act and Rules, contingency plan, and government orders.
📌 Witness rights: protection, relief, rehabilitation, and reimbursements.
📌 State systems and structures: Protection Cell, special courts, prosecutors, police stations, and officers, periodic surveys, paper trails.
📌 Stages of a case: From complaint to inquiry, inspection, investigation, trial, judgement, and beyond.
📌 Responsibilities of officials and dereliction of duty.
📌 State vigilance and monitoring mechanisms: nodal officer, SdVMC, DVMC, SVMC, SLHPVMC.

🔑 Special sessions:
📌 RTI Process – filing, appeals, formats, verification of information.
📌 Consolidating district fact sheets.
📌 Documentation & Compliance – statutory requirements, evidence handling.
📌 eCourts app usage.

🔑 Administration of justice:
📌 Role of advocates: From complaints to conviction and beyond.
📌 Documentation, evidence verification, chargesheet review.
📌 Case preparation, cross-examination, and nuances in court.

🔑 Civil Society Processes:
📌 Citizen’s Vigilance and Monitoring Committees (CVMC).
📌 Survivors Solidarity and Support Forums (SSSF).
📌 Awareness building, mobilisation, engagement: Role of CVMC, lawyers, social movements, and active citizens.
📌 Case follow-up, and court monitoring.
📌 Strategic planning, SMART goal setting: Identifying needs, assessing current status, defining objectives, and mapping pathways to 2030.
📌 Calendar of action: planning sustained engagement and monitoring.

🔑 Highlights:
📌 Experience sharing: Vachati and Manjolai case studies.
📌 Special session on land rights.
📌 Special May Day session by Advocate Bhavani Mohan.
📌 Survivors support app (developed in house).

Each day started with the state anthem Tamil Thai Vazhthu and the national pledge. With a work hard play hard schedule, the sessions were from 0830 to 2200, with just four breaks totaling five hours in between.

This programme was capacity building in its true sense—beyond just learning, it was renewing deep personal bonds, building networks, sharing strategies, and empowering communities to secure justice.

💡 A heartfelt thank you to all participants and facilitators who made this programme impactful!

For those who missed it, the training material is available at:
Tamil: https://www.cvmc.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024-POA-HBJ-Tamil.pdf
English: https://www.cvmc.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024-POA-HBJ.pdf