Awadh Bar Association & Allahabad HCBA Oppose New System Of Case Listing At High Court, To Boycott Judicial Work Today

The Awadh Bar Association at Lucknow and the Allahabad High Court Bar Association at Prayagraj have decided to boycott/abstain from judicial work at Allahabad High Court today so as to register their protest against the new system related to the listing of cases in the High Court.

The Executive Committee of the Oudh Bar Association met yesterday and deliberated upon the problems faced by the members and the number of complaints received from the members of the Bar regarding the new system of listing. 

Speaking to Live Law, the President of the Association Rakesh Kumar Chaudhary said that we have been raising our voices against the new system of listing and now we have decided to boycott judicial work only for today so as to mark our protest.

Primarily, the following 4 issues were highlighted in the Executive meeting of the Awadh Bar Association:

(a) Unnecessary and unwarranted defects been reported by the registry in fresh cases, even to the extent that, as to whether a particular petition is maintainable or not, and not forwarding the petitions to the court concerned to take a decision on the same by the Hon'ble court,

(b) inordinate time taken in passing and listing of the fresh cases,

(c) process of defect removal, by asking to remove the defect by necessarily filing supplementary affidavit (even for trivial defects such as deficiency of court fee, missing of signature of counsel of proforma attached, etc.) which was done by the learned counsel as per earlier practice; and

(d) non-listing of the pending matters despite orders of listing by the Hon'ble courts.

In the meeting, it was also discussed that problems are being faced by the members of the Bar, despite the fact that these issues were raised at different levels, time and again, with no result.

"The learned members of the bar are being harassed for one pretext or the other result being that the litigant becomes the ultimate sufferer and ultimately result into failure of justice delivery system. Even the registry is allowed/permitted to perform judicial function, in the garb of reporting of defects? The learned members of the bar are been misbehaved by the official of the registry, and harass them by reporting unnecessary defects. The, fresh filing are not coming to court in 48 hours as per earlier practice, which has no justification; The new process of defect removal is neither commensurate with the Rules of the Court nor is pragmatic nor convenient and ultimately results into harassment of counsel and the litigant," the resolution passed by the Awadh Bar Association reads.

Against this backdrop, it was resolved to request the Hon'ble Chief Justice to:

- restore the old practice of defect removal,

- direct the registry not to report unnecessary and unwarranted defects and place the file before the Hon'ble court concerned with the required note,

- list the fresh matters within 48 hrs before the court concerned as per earlier practice, and

- direct the registry to list the pending matters in which there are orders for listing and also regularly rotate the matters which could not be taken up on a particular day, within a reasonable timeframe.

It was further resolved that the member of the bar would boycott the judicial work today [May 10, 2022, i.e. Tuesday] to get their voice heard.

Similarly, a letter was written by the Allahabad HCBA to the Chief Justice of the High Court informing him of the decision of the Association to abstain from work on Tuesday (May 10).