Sensitize lawyers on impact ofstrikes on courts’ working: HC

Prayagraj: Taking serious note of lawyers abstaining from judicial work resulting in delay of disposal of cases, the Allahabad high court has directed all the district judges and commissioners of the region to sensitize lawyers through their Bar associations about the impact of strikes on ‘working of the court and plight of the litigants’.
While dismissing a petition filed by one Prafull Kumar, Justice Vivek Kumar Birla on Tuesday observed, “Lawyers cannot take working of the court for granted as on one hand, obviously the lawyers must have charged their professional fee and thereafter, they are abstaining from work and on the other hand, they are seeking a direction to the court concerned to decide the case within a specific period. It is a sheer wastage of time of the court concern and ultimately of resources, financial or otherwise, of the litigants as well of the tax payers, as daily cost of running a court is huge but is not serving any purpose, neither of the litigants nor of the society at large.”
In the present case, the petitioner was seeking expeditious disposal of his case pending in the court of the commissioner of Prayagraj division since 2014.
The court refused to grant the relief as the case was pending because lawyers were abstaining from judicial work.
The court after going through the order-sheet of the case which was pending in the lower court observed, “A perusal of the order-sheet right from the year 2014 reflects that except on few dates almost throughout the lawyers were abstaining from work. It is also pertinent to note that in fact, the lawyers are so regularly abstaining from work that a rubber stamp is being used on the order-sheet that the lawyers are abstaining from work.”
“This speaks a lot about sorry states of affairs in the courts below, particularly on revenue side,” added the court.