Patna, Feb. 21: Around 80,000 lawyers from across the state today called off their strike giving an alternative schedule of hosting the evening courts to the committee of high court judges.

The lawyers had paralysed court work for a week on the issue of evening courts.

Bihar State Bar Council, which has been opposing the constitution of evening courts tooth and nail, took a U-turn on the issue when they agreed to work in the evening courts provided their timing was changed from evening to morning and afternoon hours.

“We have decided to suspend our agitation till March 6 pending implementation of change of evening court timings from 5pm to 7pm after the high court gave assurance that a notification regarding change in the timing of evening courts would be issued within two weeks. If that is done we will appear before the (new) court,” Bihar State Bar Council Baleshwar Prasad Sharma told The Telegraph. Instead of running courts in the evening, the lawyers want them to function from 8am to 10am from July to March when the regular court sits from 10.30am to 4.30pm. The timing of the evening court should be from 12noon to 2pm from April to June when the regular court is run in the morning, Sharma said.

He categorically stated the lawyers would continue to abstain from work in the evening court till its timing was not changed.

The council has been assured by the high court that magistrates would be appointed among the competent advocates for three years on an ad hoc basis for these (evening) courts, he said, adding the council had convened a meeting of its general body on March 6 to decide future course of action.

The council had held a meeting of presidents, secretaries and representatives of 113 Bar associations from the state to get the pulse of the advocates’ mood on February 19, where a section of lawyers were of the view that the council should just abstain from the evening courts.

Prominent among those present in the meeting were Sadhu Sharan Yadav, council’s vice-chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, representative of Bar Council of India Rajendra Prasad Singh, Vishwanath Prasad Sinha, Ramakant Sharma and Vindhya Kesri Kumar, Jai Prakash Singh, Yogesh Chandra Verma and other senior advocates of the high court and members of the executive committee of the council.

When asked why the council called off its strike when its major demand of scrapping of evening courts was not being fulfilled, Sharma said: “For the sake of correcting the system we should bear the loss. The high court has agreed to appoint magistrates for the (evening) courts from advocates, which is certainly a victory.”

The lawyers had been agitating over the establishment of evening courts, which has been functioning since December 6 last year, citing poor infrastructure and law and order situation in the state.

The Bar council was of the view that instead of setting up evening courts, the high court should fill up the vacancies in the lower judiciary as establishing evening courts would be an inhuman approach as it was difficult for judicial officers, litigants, lawyers and court employees to work for additional hours.