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All India Bar Association to boycott Swatanter Kumar's court

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Press Trust of India Kolkata
The All India Bar Association today appealed the lawyers to boycott the court of National Green Tribunal (NGT) in Delhi till the time Justice (retd) Swatanter Kumar, who is facing sexual harassment allegations, heads it.

"More than 10,000 lawyers are our members in Delhi alone. We are asking all of them to boycott his court. He must resign immediately," the AIBA general secretary Joydeep Mukherjee told PTI.

He said since Kumar's appointed by the Centre, the government must remove him from the post as they had cleared a Presidential reference proposal recently in former Supreme Court judge A K Ganguly's case, who was also similarly accused of sexual harassment by a woman intern.
 

Mukherjee, also the general secretary of The All India Legal Aid Forum, said they will submit a memorandum to the President in this case.

They have also threatened to launch protests outside the NGT's office in Delhi and outside Jantar Mantar if the former Supreme Court judge doesn't resign within a week.

The apex court today admitted a petition of the former law intern seeking an inquiry on alleged sexual harassment by Kumar.

She has submitted that he was a sitting judge at the time of the alleged incident and the apex court must look into the complaint as per the Vishaka guidelines to deal with complaints of sexual harassment at work place.

Justice Kumar has described the allegations as "incredulous and false" and "some kind of conspiracy".

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First Published: Jan 15 2014 | 8:58 PM IST

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