Patna High Court on Friday witnessed acrimonious scenes when lawyers protested inside the courtroom, asking authorities to withdraw the new rules regarding filing of cases.

Though the court administration came out with a notice on Friday morning to keep the new rules in abeyance till further orders, the agitating lawyers were not satisfied with some of the conditions set by the court. On strike since February 24, the lawyers had returned to work on Thursday for two days on assurances from chief justice L. Narasimha Reddy. They claimed they would continue their strike from Monday if their demands were not met with.

The lawyers were okay with the idea of putting the new rules, which talk of correction of petitions in office of court clerk, in abeyance. But they objected to one of the clauses of the notice, which stated that the defect pointed out by the registry office of the court can be attended to by the concerned advocates or their authorised clerks, as far as possible, in the office of the high court itself. The taking out of the files for correcting the defects can be insisted upon only when it is inevitable.

The lawyers contended that this clause was like bringing back the rule from the back door. Sri Prakash Srivastava, the convener of the co-ordination committee of the three associations of the high court - Advocates' Association, Bar Association and Lawyers' Association - which have jointly called the strike, said: 'We demand the removal of the condition put forth by the court's administration. Until, this condition is completely withdrawn, we will be left with no option but to resume our strike from Monday.'

We have written a letter to the chief justice demanding removal of Clause B. 'We are hopeful that the chief justice would heed to our demand,' Srivastava added.

Srivastava said: 'As soon as the notice was served to us, a section of lawyers belonging to different associations started raising protest against the notice. They (lawyers) created pandemonium in the courtrooms in the first half. This forced the judges to leave the courtrooms, while hearing was on in several cases. The judges went back to their respective chambers. The situation came to such a state as personnel from Rapid Action Force were called to ward off any untoward incident inside the court. The force was called reportedly for the protection of the judges.'?

Seeing the RAF inside the court building, the lawyers again started raising slogans. They later forced the security personnel to go out of the building. When the court resumed work after recess, only a few judges went to the courtroom again. The high court has come out with a rule in November 2014, bringing changes in the procedure to file new cases and rectify the defects, if any, in the original petition.

According to the rule, the original copy of the petition shall not be returned to the advocates for removing defects, as the counsels will now have to go to the office and stand in queue in front of the clerks to get those defects rectified.#

The lawyers opposed this, as they claimed the rule was against the dignity of the lawyers because it compels them to queue up before the clerks requesting them to remove defects, if any, in the petition.#