The secretary of the Calcutta High Court Bar Association, Biswabrata Mazumdar, informed Justice Rajasekhar Mantha on Thursday that the decision to boycott his court by a section of association members had been withdrawn.
However, a large number of state panel lawyers are still not attending cases in Justice Mantha’s courtroom.
Proceedings are getting stalled in the absence of lawyers appearing for the Bengal government.
A number of lawyers of the high court had boycotted proceedings in Justice Mantha’s court on Monday and Tuesday alleging that he had been biased in favour of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.
They also allegedly prevented other lawyers from entering the courtroom.
Justice Mantha told advocate-general S.N. Mookherjee on Thursday that some state panel lawyers were still abstaining from proceedings in his court. Mookherjee apparently pleaded helplessness saying the situation had increased his workload as he was trying to appear in as many cases as possible.
A woman lawyer on the state panel said during the day she was not being allotted fresh cases because she had appeared before Justice Mantha in a case.
The registrar-general of the high court issued a notification saying a three-member team of the Bar Council of India would come to Calcutta to investigate the incidents at the high court earlier this week.
Ashok Deb, Trinamul MLA and a member of the Bar Council of India, said he and some other members of the state bar council met Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava on Friday and requested him to help resolve the issue through talks between Justice Mantha and lawyers.
