Taking a cue from lawyers in Karnataka and Odisha, advocates of the Calcutta High Court have begun a five-day strike to protest the number of judicial vacancies..The High Court is currently functioning at around 40% of its sanctioned strength of 72 judges. The retirement of three judges this month – Justices Siddhartha Chattopadhyay, Mir Dara Sheko and Debi Prosad Dey – has brought the working strength to 30 judges, two of whom sit at the High Court’s Circuit Bench at Port Blair..In light of these facts, the resolution to abstain from work was taken by the High Court Bar Association on Friday. Speaking to Bar & Bench, Calcutta High Court Bar Association President Uttam Kumar Majumder said,.“This not a new problem, it has been an issue for the last two-three years. We have requested all concerned authorities, but all our demands have been unheeded. We have sent letters to the Law Minister, the Chief Justice of India, the Chief Minister of the state, but nobody has taken interest. There is nothing else we can do, except to abstain from work.”.Majumder revealed that the lawyers are also protesting the fact that the Calcutta High Court has not had a permanent Chief Justice for more than two years. Justice Jyotirmay Bhattacharya has been serving as Acting Chief Justice since October 2017..And it seems that all lawyers and associations at the High Court are standing in solidarity with the High Court Bar Association. Majumder says,.“100% of the advocates are supporting the strike, nobody has appeared today.”.As regards the current status of appointments, Majumder said that five or six names had been recommended for elevation by the Supreme Court Collegium “long before”. As was the case at the Karnataka High Court, the recommendations have been pending with the Union Law Ministry for quite a while now..Secretary of the Incorporated Law Society Paritosh Sinha shed more light on this in a TOI report. He was quoted as saying,.“We have our backs to the wall. The SC collegium recommendations on December 4 seeking to elevate five members of the bar as HC judges, hasn’t been heeded for over two months. The HC has been functioning with less than half its sanctioned strength.”.However, the appointment of just these five or six judges will do little in the way of ameliorating the issue. Says Majumder,.“But appointing five or six judges is not enough; there are more than forty vacancies. We have not taken this decision (to go on strike) only for filling up five or six vacancies; our request is to fill up at least fifteen posts.”.As per statistics on the Calcutta High Court website, over 2.2 lakh cases are pending as of December 1, 2017. In order to ensure that the pendency figures do not go out of hand as a result of the burgeoning vacancies, the protesting advocates are hoping for a similar resolution to that achieved by lawyers in Karnataka, sooner rather than later.
Taking a cue from lawyers in Karnataka and Odisha, advocates of the Calcutta High Court have begun a five-day strike to protest the number of judicial vacancies..The High Court is currently functioning at around 40% of its sanctioned strength of 72 judges. The retirement of three judges this month – Justices Siddhartha Chattopadhyay, Mir Dara Sheko and Debi Prosad Dey – has brought the working strength to 30 judges, two of whom sit at the High Court’s Circuit Bench at Port Blair..In light of these facts, the resolution to abstain from work was taken by the High Court Bar Association on Friday. Speaking to Bar & Bench, Calcutta High Court Bar Association President Uttam Kumar Majumder said,.“This not a new problem, it has been an issue for the last two-three years. We have requested all concerned authorities, but all our demands have been unheeded. We have sent letters to the Law Minister, the Chief Justice of India, the Chief Minister of the state, but nobody has taken interest. There is nothing else we can do, except to abstain from work.”.Majumder revealed that the lawyers are also protesting the fact that the Calcutta High Court has not had a permanent Chief Justice for more than two years. Justice Jyotirmay Bhattacharya has been serving as Acting Chief Justice since October 2017..And it seems that all lawyers and associations at the High Court are standing in solidarity with the High Court Bar Association. Majumder says,.“100% of the advocates are supporting the strike, nobody has appeared today.”.As regards the current status of appointments, Majumder said that five or six names had been recommended for elevation by the Supreme Court Collegium “long before”. As was the case at the Karnataka High Court, the recommendations have been pending with the Union Law Ministry for quite a while now..Secretary of the Incorporated Law Society Paritosh Sinha shed more light on this in a TOI report. He was quoted as saying,.“We have our backs to the wall. The SC collegium recommendations on December 4 seeking to elevate five members of the bar as HC judges, hasn’t been heeded for over two months. The HC has been functioning with less than half its sanctioned strength.”.However, the appointment of just these five or six judges will do little in the way of ameliorating the issue. Says Majumder,.“But appointing five or six judges is not enough; there are more than forty vacancies. We have not taken this decision (to go on strike) only for filling up five or six vacancies; our request is to fill up at least fifteen posts.”.As per statistics on the Calcutta High Court website, over 2.2 lakh cases are pending as of December 1, 2017. In order to ensure that the pendency figures do not go out of hand as a result of the burgeoning vacancies, the protesting advocates are hoping for a similar resolution to that achieved by lawyers in Karnataka, sooner rather than later.
