Supreme Court seeks info on number of lawyers' strikes in Uttar Pradesh

The Supreme Court on Friday called for the submission of data on the number of lawyers' strikes and boycotts by district bar associations that have taken place in Uttar Pradesh this year [Faizabad Bar Association v. Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh and Others]..A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Justices Ujjal Bhuyan asked the Allahabad High Court to compile these details by calling for reports from all district judges in the State."The Registrar General of the High Court shall collect information from all the District and Sessions Judges in the State of Uttar Pradesh and furnish the details of the abstaining from work observed by their respective District Bar Associations at least during the year 2023-2024."The top court emphasised that advocates need to understand the sense of responsibility that comes with being an officer of the court."It is a very serious issue. Our whole judicial system has been paralysed. People from villages come from far and then," Justice Kant remarked..The Court was hearing the Faizabad bar association's appeal against an August 8 decision of the Allahabad High Court that established an Elders Committee to take over the affairs of the association, oversee its business and guarantee that elections to its Governing Council are held by December 2024.It had earlier expressed strong disapproval over the frequent lawyers' strikes called for by the bar body. During the hearing on September 4, the top court noted the Allahabad High Court's observation that out of a total of 134 working days from November 2023 to April 2024, lawyers in Faizabad had abstained from work for 66 days.The top court had proceeded to order every office bearer of the bar association to file an affidavit stating that they would not pass any resolution to abstain from judicial work in future. The top court also refused to stay the High Court's order. .During today's hearing of the matter, the Bench said that it wished to expand the scope of the case to evaluate how all bar associations in Uttar Pradesh are functioning.The High Court was, thus, asked to compile details from all district judges through reports about court boycotts in 2024.The matter will next be taken up on September 23, when the Bench is likely to pass some interim directions..Senior Advocates Rakesh Kumar Khanna and Sukumar Pattjoshi with Advocates Kumar Murlidhar, Atul Verma, Aditya P Khanna, Adarsh Kumar Pandey, Mukesh Kumar, Varun Chugh, Mithilesh Kumar Jaiswal, Arun Kanwa, Vignesh Singh, Anoop Krishna Upadhyay, Abhinav Kaushik, Prashant Trivedi, Alok Kumar, Gautam Barnwal, Shailendra P Singh and Rohit Singh Lodhi appeared for the Faizabad bar association.Senior Advocate CU Singh appeared for the original writ petitioners before the High Court and opposed the present appeal.Senior Advocate and Uttar Pradesh Additional Advocate General K Parameshwar appeared for the Allahabad High Court..[Read order].[Read Live Coverage]