Supreme Court warns against disrupting legal aid work during strikes, closes contempt of court case against Bar Association

The Supreme Court recently closed a contempt of court case against erstwhile office-bearers of the Bharatpur Bar Association, Rajasthan accused of impeding the work of lawyers who avoided calls for strikes and boycott of courts [Purnaprakash Sharma and ors v. Yashwant Singh Faujdar and ors].A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha also cautioned that the Court would take coercive action if any lawyer is stopped from working or expelled citing non-participation in strikes.."The concerned members of the Bar are placed on notice that this Court will be constrained to take recourse to the coercive arm of law, should any incident occur in the future. There shall be no impediment in the work of legal defense counsel," the Court warned in an order passed on July 10..In this case, there were allegations that the petitioners, who were defense counsel extending legal aid, were stopped from working by the association's office-bearers on the ground that the petitioners had weakened and opposed the bar’s calls for a strike. .The legal aid services authority had introduced a ‘Legal Aid Defence Counsel Scheme' for Bharatpur district. As per the scheme, lawyers were to be engaged full time to exclusively work to provide legal aid to persons accused or convicted of crimes. When the recruitment process for the scheme was initiated, the lawyers in Bharatpur protested against the scheme. The petitioners, advocates Purnaprakash Sharma, Puneet Garg and Madhavendra Singh, however, continued working under the scheme and did not participate in the protest. In view of this, the petitioners were issued show cause notice for opposing and weakening the movement. When they did not budge, they were suspended for not falling in line.The petitioners approached the Supreme Court seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against office bearers of the bar association.The apex court then sought response from the respondent-office bearers. .The Court closed the contempt of proceedings after taking note of undertakings that no calls for strikes or impeding the work of legal aid counsel remained. .The Court was also informed that the membership of the petitioners and other similarly placed lawyers in the association had been reinstated..Advocates KV Upadhyaya and Anuj Bhandari appeared for the erstwhile and current Bharatpur Bar office-bearers respectively. Advocate Abhigya Kushwah and Sunita Yadav appeared for the petitioners..[Read order]