Ending the 35-year-long strike, advocates in three districts of Uttarakhand, who had been boycotting the courts on all working Saturdays went back to work last weekend.
Lawyers in these districts of the state have been protesting for over three decades demanding a high court be established bench in the region.
The advocates skipping courts called-off the strike after the Supreme Court on February 29 reprimanded them saying “Lawyers going on strike and boycotting the courts cannot be justified in the guise of freedom of speech and expression, particularly when the judiciary is facing a serious backlog of cases.”
The Supreme Court took congnisance of the matter while it was hearing an appeal against the September 25, 2019 verdict of the Uttarakhand High Court which had held as “illegal” the strikes on all Saturdays by lawyers in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar.
The apex court upheld the ruling of the Uttarakhand High Court, which directed the state’s bar council to initiate action against erring office bearers of various district bar associations in the state that observed strike on Saturdays.
“To go on strike/boycott courts cannot be justified under the guise of the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Nobody has the right to go on strike/boycott courts. Even such a right, if any, cannot affect the rights of others and more particularly, the right of speedy justice guaranteed under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution”, the court said.
Notably, the high court had underlined that the said form of protest was linked to western Uttar Pradesh, of which the above districts were part, before the state of Uttarakhand was crafted out of Uttar Pradesh in the year 2000. Lawyers from the region have been on strike on all Saturdays for the past three-and-a-half decades seeking a high court bench in that region.