Court orders to call off strike, instead action to be taken against advocates

On Friday, the Madhya Pradesh High Court issued an order and asked the advocates to call off the strikes which were conducted for three days to protest against a policy envisaged by the administration of the High Court to dispose of long-pending cases in the district courts.

Bhopal: Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday issued an order and asked the advocates to call off the strikes which were conducted for three days to protest against a policy envisaged by the administration of the High Court to dispose of long-pending cases in the district courts.

Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice Ravi Malimath and Justice Vishal Mishra on Friday heard a suo moto petition and the members of the Madhya Pradesh Bar Council, High Court Bar Association and District Bar Association were made parties. After hearing the petition, in the order of 10 pages, the Chief Justice ordered the lawyers to return to the trials immediately.

"All the advocates throughout the State of Madhya Pradesh are hereby directed to attend to their court work forthwith. They shall represent their clients in the respective cases before the respective courts forthwith," the order stated.

"If any lawyer deliberately avoids to attend the court, it shall be presumed that there is disobedience of this order and he will be faced with serious consequences including initiation of proceedings for contempt of court under the Contempt of Courts Act," the order added.

"If any lawyer prevents any other lawyer from attending the court work, the same would be considered as disobedience of these directions and he will be faced with serious consequence including initiation of proceedings under the Contempt of Courts Act," the court further stated.

According to sources, after the order of the Chief Justice in which 25 old cases have been ordered to be disposed of with priority and the advocates were not agreed with the order and staged a strike.