Patna, Feb. 12: Around 80,000 advocates will go on a weeklong strike from February 15 if Patna High Court does not withdraw the notification for setting up evening courts. The move is set to cripple court work in the entire state.

The decision to go for the strike was taken in the form of a resolution at an executive committee meeting of Bihar State Bar Council, attended by 24 of its 26 members.

Sadhu Sharan Yadav, the vice-chairman of the council, Manan Kumar Mishra, the representative of Bar Council of India, Rajendra Prasad Singh, Vishwanath Prasad Sinha, Ramakant Sharma and Vindhya Kesri Kumar, all senior high court advocates and members of the executive committee attended the meeting.

With the high court’s notification, an evening court has been functioning since December 6 last year in every district court of the state to reduce backlog of cases but the lawyers have been agitating over their establishment saying the courts in the state neither have proper infrastructure nor a conducive atmosphere (law and order).

“The decision has been taken unanimously by the council. A copy of the resolution would be submitted on Monday to the registrar general of the high court requesting it to withdraw the notification for evening courts. If we do not receive a positive response by the evening, lawyers from the state would not work for a week starting from Tuesday. There would be no work right from sub-divisional courts to the high court,” Bihar State Bar Council chairman Baleshwar Prasad Sharma told The Telegraph today.

Sharma said the council may review the situation on February 19.

He said the lawyers may go on an indefinite strike as well.