Lawyers across Odisha today boycotted courts paralysing judicial activities, including that of the High Court, in protest against state government's decision to abolish benches of State Administrative Tribunal.
In a related development during the day, a delegation of Orissa Bar Council met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at Bhubaneswar and submitted a memorandum urging him to recall the September 9 approval of the cabinet on SAT abolition.
"The Chief Minister after listening to our arguments as to why the SAT should not be abolished, assured us that he would look into the matter," informed Bar Council Chairman Manas Mohapatra.
All the 50,000 lawyers of 165 bars across the state shall resume their court work from tomorrow, Mohapatra said adding the lawyers shall wear black badges as a mark of protest.
"We have given 15 days time to the state government to reconsider its decision on SAT after which, we will chalk out our next course of action," he said.
Notably, the lawyers of administrative tribunal bars, including that of the Bhubaneswar Bar Association were boycotting the courts ever since the state cabinet approved a decision to abolish SAT.
Meanwhile, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has written a letter to Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Jitendra Singh urging him to consider the proposal of Odisha government to abolish SAT in the context of issues raised by SAT bar associations and also keeping in mind the interest of state government employees.
Stating that while forums were available for non-government employees in education, cooperative and industrial sectors in redressing their grievances, lawyers in the state argue as to why state employees would be deprived of such a forum by abolishing the SAT.
The lawyers also pointed out that ever since its establishment in 1986, SAT had received 266911 cases by December 31, 2014, out of which 208677 cases are disposed off.
Among the 58,234 pending cases, over 22,000 are contempt cases against the state government and if they are transferred to Orissa High Court in the form of writs, the burden on HC would increase and justice would be delayed for the employees, they said.
