lawyers here on Saturday boycotted the Rashtriya lok Adalat being organised in each district court following the Supreme Court’s directives. Ghaziabad Bar Association announced the boycott to press their long-pending demand for setting up a Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Western Uttar Pradesh.
Bar Association president Anil Pandit said Western UP lawyers have been demanding the Bench for 34 years but the State and Central Governments have blindsided them. The committee at Meerut decided to boycott the proceedings of the Rashtriya lok Adalat at the district-level in all 22 districts of Western Uttar Pradesh. This has been the longest agitation by lawyers in Western Uttar Pradesh.
like other districts in Western UP, the Ghaziabad Bar Association also boycotted the courts. All entry gates leading to civil courts were locked. No litigants were allowed to attend the courts, Pandit said.
Calling it criminal apathy, Pandit said litigants from 22 districts were the worst-affected. They were convinced by teams of lawyers and the litigants agreed to cooperate with the lawyers’ call of total strike on Saturday, he added.
law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda had agreed to establish a Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Western Uttar Pradesh after a delegation of three Ministers - General (Retd) VK Singh, Sanjeev Baliyan and Mahesh Sharma and several MPs from Meerut, Bulandshahr and other adjoining districts along with lawyers - had met him on December 1, Pandit said.
Earlier, lawyers on Wednesday morning staged a dharna at VK Singh’s Ghaziabad residence, gheraoed him and submitted a memorandum urging him for support. At present, over 12 lakh cases are pending in Allahabad High Court alone.