Advocates of Allahabad High Court call of strike

Lawyers of Allahabad High Court today called off their month-old strike, a day after a committee of judges set up to look into the feasibility of creating a separate bench for western Uttar Pradesh was dissolved.
The lawyers will resume judicial work from Monday.
The decision was announced by the High Court Bar Association's Chairman Rakesh Pande and Secretary C P Upadhyay a day after the High Court administration dissolved the committee.
"In view of yesterday's developments, members of the HCBA have decided that they would resume judicial work on Monday, January 12," the HCBA office-bearers said.
The advocates went on strike on December 12 when news reports suggesting that the Centre was in favour of creating a separate bench of the High Court for the western part of the state appeared in some dailies.

During the strike, which entered its 29th day today, the lawyers registered their protest by meeting Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Sadananda Gowda in New Delhi.

Earlier this week, they called on the High Court's Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud who told them that he has set up a judges' committee to look into the feasibility of such a proposal following a query from the then Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad.
Members of the committee, who were present at the meeting between the Chief Justice and the advocates, had assured the latter that no report would be submitted without taking the Bar Association into confidence.

Yesterday, the HCBA had raised the demand that the proposal for a separate bench be unequivocally rejected by the Chief Justice and the judges' committee.
Later, the High Court administration announced that the committee stood dissolved .
It was also announced that the jurisdiction of the judgeship of Meerut, where judicial work has been affected for a long time owing to legal practitioners' stir, was being transferred to the judgeship of Moradabad.