More than 4,600 lawyers of Jharkhand High Court along with 4,000 advocates of Civil Court in Ranchi abstained from Court work on Wednesday as a protest against the proposed Amendment Bill 2017 in Advocates Act 1961. Meanwhile, no adverse order was passed in any of the courts and the clients who appeared personally were heard and some of them were also given relief by respective courts.
“The State Bar Council is competent enough to take action against the erring advocates, but they want to put us under Government’s control which is not acceptable to us. They want to form a committee involving people outside the field…how they would know the problems faced by advocates. We will not let this bill be passed at any cost,” said Advocate General Binod Poddar.
The decision was taken by Advocate’s Association of Jharkhand High Court to abstain from the court work on Wednesday as a matter of protest against the proposed amendments bill 2017 in Advocates Act 1961 during which a resolution was taken to hand over a memorandum to all the MPs or Rajya Sabha and lok Sabha in the State requesting them to vote against the bill which was not in the interest of advocates.
“Today we marched from Jharkhand High Court till Ambedkar Chowk and sat on dharna over there for a while. It was a peaceful protest involving as many as 600 advocates of Jharkhand High Court against the proposed amendment bill 2017,” said Jharkhand High Court Advocates Association President Hemant Shikarwar. A meeting has been called by Bar Council of India on March 8 to chalk out further plan of action in this regard, he added.
“We will also try to meet the Prime Minister in this regard and request him to rethink on the bill before getting it passed,” said Shikarwar.
The proposed amendment, according to Shikarwar was against Democracy where the whole Act of 1961 has been missed.
“The basic objective of the Act of 1961 was to keep advocates independent, but they are pushing us towards slavery,” Shikarwar said. Presently 25 advocates are elected through voting in the State Bar Council but according to the proposed amendment there will be 21 members in it out of which only 10 advocates will be elected through voting while other five will be nominated by Jharkhand High Court and rest of the six members will be nominated by the State Government from different fields like medical practitioners, bureaucrats, politicians, chartered accountants etc, he added.
“The proposed amendment also enforces harsh conduct from the advocates and liable to be referred to the disciplinary committee even for arguing in the court loudly or for dirty collar of his shirt which could not be tolerated at any cost,” said the Advocate’s Association President. The compensation provisions are also quite harmful and anti-advocates, added Shikarwar.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) on Monday also declared that lawyers all over the country will not attend court on March 31 in protest against the proposed changes in the Advocates Act, 1961 – which governs the conduct of lawyers. Calling it draconian and anti-lawyer, the BCI took a firm stand that it will oppose any proposed change that takes away lawyers’ right to strike and penalises those who skip appearance in court during a strike.