Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Bar Council’s call for a week-long strike, beginning September 23, has led to battle lines being drawn between lawyers on different sides of the political divide. The state Bar Council president, Shivendra Upadhyay of the Bharatiya Janata Party, unilaterally announced that advocates in the state will go on strike, In that week, he said, no work will be done till 2 pm. After that, they will sit on dharna in their respective court premises to press for their three-point demands.

“The Congress government had promised an Advocates Protection Act in its manifesto and it is yet to fulfil its promise," he said. The other two demands relate to filling 23 vacant judges' positions in MP and adding another 17 new ones to “clear backlog of cases in the state”. He did not explain, though, how losing six days of work will help clear a back log.

Senior vice-president of the Council, Paritosh Trivedi, added that the strike has been supported with the condition that it will not be withdrawn simply on “assurances”. An Advocates Protection Act will protect lawyers from arrest without the court’s permission, amongst other things. It is on the lines of protection provided to bureaucrats.

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There has been immediate opposition to the demand for a strike. Former advocate-general of the state Vivek Tankha, now a Rajya Sabha MP from the Congress, tweeted that he supports the demands but not the strike. “There are four senior judges of the Supreme Court including Justice Bobde and Justice Arun Mishra who have some association with the state, and we should seek their support. By striking, millions of clients will suffer and money and man hours will be lost," he said.

Senior advocate H.K. Tiwari has submitted a letter signed by 200 advocates of the Jabalpur high court stating that elections to the Bar Council have been announced, so there was no reason to call a strike. This is only an attempt to win an election or prolong the term of the Council, and once the elections are announced the Council should desist from taking such executive decisions, the letter suggests.

A committee led by BJP's Upadhyay had said that a panel consisting of the state advocate-general and several additional advocate-generals will manage the strike. However, it now appears they may not have taken the consent of advocate-general Shashank Shekhar and a few additional advocate-generals before putting their names on the strike panel. It is likely that Shekhar and his team may withdraw from the strike.

Most advocates believe that the demands are justified, but the Bar Council is positioning itself in a manner which may cause disturbances in the state. There is already a farmers' strike on, and the political future of chief minister Kamal Nath hangs in the balance as old 1984 riots cases are re-opened. The lawyers strike will do nothing to increase the number of judges, because those are decisions taken by the Supreme Court and the Central government.

It is interesting to note that a case decided by the Supreme Court related to Madhya Pradesh (Krishnakant Tamrakar vs State of MP) said that strikes by lawyers are illegal and undesirable. To quote from the judgement:

“By every strike, irreversible damage is suffered by the judicial system, particularly consumers of justice. They are denied access to justice. Taxpayers’ money is lost on account of judicial and public time being lost. Nobody is accountable for such loss and harassment. Lawyers have no right to strike. No Bar Council or Bar Association can permit calling of a meeting for purposes of considering a call for strike or boycott and requisition. Only in the rarest of rare cases where the dignity, integrity, and independence of the Bar and/or the Bench are at issue, courts may ignore to a protest abstention from work for not more than one day.”

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