Lawyers move high court against sloganeering colleagues.

Source – hindustantimes.com

New Delhi A group of lawyers, including bar associations of city courts, moved to the Delhi High Court on Friday seeking action against advocates who had raised derogatory slogans after the court did not grant relief to petitioners in the Jamia violence, which broke out on December 15.

Seeking contempt proceedings against the lawyers, senior advocates, including Central government’s standing counsels and other leaders of the bar, urged a bench of chief justice, DN Patel, and justice C Hari Shankar, to take action against the lawyers for their “disrespectful” and “derogatory” conduct towards the judiciary on Thursday.

The court referred the matter to one of its committees for necessary action.

As the high court bench was rising after hearing pleas pertaining to the clashes that broke out during the protest at the varsity, a few lawyers raised slogans and some juniors broke down as the court did not pass any order providing interim relief to the students.

Senior advocate Chetan Sharma strongly condemned the sloganeering and said that use of derogatory words against the judges was “sacrilege” of the judiciary and “a lesson has to go” that such conduct would not be tolerated. He urged the court to take suo motu cognizance of the matter so that such an incident is not repeated.

Senior advocate Sanjay Poddar said that such conduct was “disrespecting the judiciary and the bar” and action needs to be taken. Other lawyers, including the government counsels, asked the court to take strict action while also seeking action from the Bar Council of India.

On Thursday, the high court had sought the response of the Centre, Delhi government and the city police on six pleas that had sought action against the police and setting up of a judicial commission to probe the violence at Jamia Milia Islamia, in the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests.