UP: Lawyers resume work in high court and most district courts

Advocates returned to work on Friday after over 15 days with the High Court Bar Association and the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh withdrawing their strike after talks with the chief secretary late last night.

Ashok Kumar Singh, chairman of the High Court Bar Association, told PTI that it was decided in a meeting of the body held in Prayagraj on Friday morning to withdraw the call given to abstain from judicial work. The lawyers have resumed work in the high court, he said.

Lawyers in several districts, including Prayagraj, Kanpur, Varanasi and other places returned to work from Friday. Lawyers also returned to work in the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday.

However, the lawyers of Hapur continued the strike, sticking to their demands, including transfer/suspension of the police officials responsible for lathi-charge on their colleagues.

Ignoring the decision of the bar council to call off the strike, the Hapur Bar Association continued its strike to protest against alleged misbehaviour with the female lawyers and lathi-charge on August 29.

Lawyers in Uttar Pradesh have been on a strike since August 30 over the issue.

Police had allegedly lathi-charged lawyers Hapur when they were protesting against registration of a case against a woman advocate and her father after a confrontation between the lawyer and police when she was going to Ghaziabad in her car.

Hapur Bar Association secretary Narendra Sharma said harassment of advocates will not be tolerated. "Last night, the bar council arbitrarily passed the decision to end the agitation without taking the aggrieved advocates of the Hapur Bar Association into confidence.

"The entire advocate community is feeling cheated by this decision of the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh. Hapur Bar Association does not agree with this and our movement is being continuously supported by the bar association at the state level," Sharma said.

 Advocate Priyanka Tyagi, who allegedly had an altercation with a policeman following which a scuffle took place in the Hapur court premises leading to a police action on the lawyers, told PTI that the strike will continue till they "receive written assurance about the action taken by the government against the errant cops who ordered the lathi-charge." "Lawyers from several districts are arriving in Hapur to extend their support to the strike," she claimed.

In Kanpur, Lawyers Association's general secretary, Sharad Shukla, told PTI that the advocates have returned to their work. They resumed work only after the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government accepted all the demands of the lawyers who were on strike for the last two weeks.

General secretary of Varanasi Central Bar Shashikant Dubey said that considering the assurance of the Uttar Pradesh government to fulfil their demands and keeping the interests of the general public and advocates, they are ending the strike from Friday. "We hope that the government will fulfil our demands soon," Dubey said.

"Talks with Chief Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra were very positive. He has assured us that the cases registered against advocates across the state during the movement will be dropped," Uttar Pradesh Bar Council president Shiv Kishore Gaur had told PTI last night.  "The government has accepted the demand of suspension of the guilty police officers and the transfer of senior police officers in Hapur. We are calling off the strike as our demands were accepted," he added.

The strike by lawyers had affected the judicial work in the Allahabad High Court as well as in the district courts of the state.