Telangana lawyers meet CJI Thakur, no solution to bifurcation deadlock

Chaos prevails in the lower courts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana even as advocates continue to demand bifurcation of the existing High Court at Hyderabad..A recent meeting between the protesting lawyers of the Telangana High Court Advocates Association and Chief Justice of India TS Thakur bore little fruit..Speaking to Bar & Bench, General Secretary of the Advocates Association, V Rama Krishna Reddy said,.“We have decided to continue the strike. On Sunday, our representatives met the Chief Justice of India. He gave his assurance as the head of the institution that he would take relevant steps if we called off the strike.”.However, the advocates are not willing to call off the strike until their demands are met. As a result of the impasse, proceedings in lower courts are being hindered..In the High Court, there is no boycott of court proceedings; the advocates protest in front of the Bar Council building every day at the lunch hour..The meeting with CJI Thakur took place after a ‘Maha Dharna’ was held on July 1 at Indira Park in Hyderabad, by the members of the fledgling state’s legal fraternity. On that same day, around 8,000 subordinate judges and employees of various lower courts went on strike, demanding the revocation of the allocation list of subordinate judges in the two states..Last week, The Telangana Judges Association, led by President K Ravinder Reddy led a procession in the streets of Hyderabad, protesting against the allocation of 135 judges from Andhra Pradesh in the lower courts of Telangana. Subordinate judges also decided to go on mass leave in protest of the allocation..The High Court, led by Acting Chief Justice DB Bhosale is not willing to entertain these demands. It has hit back hard, ordering the suspension of as many as 11 protesting judges and rejecting the mass applications for leave. Reddy reveals that the suspensions have not been revoked yet..The demands for bifurcation of the High Court have been going on since the inception of the new state..Says Reddy,.“We have taken up the issue with the Central and state governments, the Law Ministry, but everybody has been silent. Nobody is giving us assurances; the state government says it is the Centre’s domain, but the Centre says that it should be done by the governments of the two states.”.Image taken from here.