HC directs Bar Council to respond to PILs seeking financial assistance to distressed lawyers

The Calcutta High Court on

Thursday directed the Bar Council of West Bengal to respond to claims made in PILs seeking financial assistance to distressed lawyers, since normal work in the courts has come to a standstill due to the ongoing lockdown over COVID-19 outbreak.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice T B N Radhakrishnan and Justice Arijit Banerjee directed the state Bar Council to respond to the claims made in the PILs through an affidavit by the next date of hearing on April 23.

Calcutta High Court Bar Association president Ashoke Kumar Dhandania had written a letter to the judiciary seeking direction to the Bar Council to come to the assistance of lawyers who are financially distressed owing to the suspension of normal work in the high court and other subordinate courts in the state.

 

The division bench on Thursday took up the letter as a PIL along with another PIL filed before the court in this regard.

The petitioners invoked the provisions of the West Bengal Advocates' Welfare Fund Act, 1991 and the West Bengal Advocates' Welfare Corporation Act, 2012, seeking a direction on the West Bengal Bar Council "to frame a scheme for granting financial assistance to the lawyers who may require such assistance in view of the fact that work in the courts has come to a standstill," the bench noted.

The division bench, hearing the PILs through video conference, directed the registrar general to issue notice to all the respondents - the state Bar Council and the West Bengal government, through email.

Claiming that the Council takes subscriptions from lawyers registered with it, Dhandania sought that the Council come to the assistance of distressed lawyers who are not in a good financial position at this hour of crisis.

With the professional practise having come to a standstill following the lockdown and the high court deciding to hear only very urgent matters since March 15 owing to the spread of the coronavirus, financially weak lawyers should be given assistance by the Council, which is the parent body of all registered lawyers, according to the Bar Association president.