BJD loyalist lawyers sidelined from strike, demanding arrest of policemen

The members of BJD Legal Front will resume attending their respective courts all over the state either from Monday or Tuesday next, its convener Milan Kanungo said here today.

Lawyers loyal to the ruling BJD Saturday distanced itself from the Orissa High Court Bar Association's decision to burn effigies of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for the government's silence on the two-month-old strike by lawyers and will resume work early next week.

The association vice-president Bansidhar Satpathy put in his papers alleging that the lawyers'strike in the state has been politicised.

The association has been spearheading the agitation along with the Bar Council of Odisha are on strike since August 29 demanding the arrest of a police constable and a police havildar for allegedly beating up a lawyer on August 28 here. A PIL on the matter is pending in the Cuttack high court and the Supreme Court in September had ordered the lawyers to resume work for the benefit of the litigants.

The members of BJD Legal Front will resume attending their respective courts all over the state either from Monday or Tuesday next, its convener Milan Kanungo said here today.

He called upon other like-minded advocates to resume court works "to give relief to the general public". Satpathy announcing his resignation said, Since I was forced to sign in a resolution that called for the burning of the effigies of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and gherao Naveen Niwas (CM's residence), I am resigning from the post of vice-president of the association on moral grounds." Kanungo said the BJD Legal Front is walking out of the lawyers strike for four reasons - that the advocates movement has taken the shape of a political movement, it is responding to the High Courts call to resume work, in view of the sufferings of general public and for the cause of advocates who genuinely want the strike to end soon.

(With inputs from agencies.)