Even as the Orissa High Court here reopened after a month-long summer vacation on Monday, lawyers boycotted the courts of the Chief Justice and two other senior judges of the court in protest against the decision of the High Court Collegium for recommending the names of outside law practitioners to be elevated as judges of the High Court.
“Our boycott-protest of the courts of Chief Justice KS Jhaveri and the courts of other Collegium members Justice Kumari Sanju Panda and Justice SK Mishra will continue till June 26,” said High Court Bar Association secretary Sanjay Kumar Das.
The lawyers, nevertheless, attended the courts of all other judges of the High Court on the day and will continue to do so, Das informed. Das said a delegation of the HC Bar Association would visit New Delhi this week to urge the Union Law Minister and the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to intervene in the unprecedented decision taken by the HC Collegium.
The lawyers have been protesting for over a month now since they learnt that the HC Collegium has recommended the name of an Odia law practitioner of the Supreme Court to be appointed as a judge of the Orissa High Court.
Normal practice is that law practitioners of the High Court having more than ten years of experience and conducting a sufficient number of cases of different categories in the High Court are considered to be elevated as judges.