Lawyers boycott HC over demand of abolition of Lucknow bench

Advocates of the Allahabad High Court today boycotted judicial work to press the demand for "abolition" of the Lucknow Bench which said should be restored to the status of a revenue court.
Members of the High Court Bar Association led by its president Kandarp Narayan Mishra sat in front of the HC main gate as soon as it was reopened after a three-day-holiday on account of the festival of Holi.
The lawyers raised slogans and distributed copies of a memorandum demanding "abolition of the Lucknow Bench, shifting of all cases pending there to the Main Bench at Allahabad and restoring the original status of the Lucknow Bench which was meant to be a revenue court for disposing cases falling in the jurisdiction of commissionerates of Lucknow and Faizabad".

The sudden demand by advocates is believed to be a reaction to the persistent demand for setting up a separate Bench in western region which would rob the legal practitioners here of a sizeable clientele from that prosperous but crime-infested region.
Meanwhile, the HCBA president Mishra said that judicial work is likely to remain suspended at the High Court as well as other judicial bodies here and in other parts of the state following a call for protest given by UP Bar Council against alleged "anti-lawyers" provisions of the Contempt of Court Act.