Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya will don the advocate?s gown in Calcutta High Court next week.

Under pressure from his clients, comprising MLAs, trade union leaders, jute mill-owners and state government officials, the municipal affairs department is set to allow him to continue work as a lawyer, on condition that he does not draw his remuneration of Rs 4,100 as mayor.

?I will appear in court next week on behalf of the Bustee Federation, in connection with a case involving a slum on Keshub Sen Street,? the mayor said on Sunday. ?There is no legal bar on my carrying on practice,? he added.

Bhattacharya was handling over 500 briefs of the state government, industrial units, trade unions, businessmen, teachers and social welfare organisations before he became mayor.

A senior official in the civic law department said: ?While filing the nomination for the post of mayor, Bhattacharya had to submit an undertaking that he would not hold any other office of profit which was likely to disturb him from discharging his duties as mayor. We are yet to receive further instruction from the government in this regard.?

The official said in June 2004, the state government had issued an instruction prohibiting simultaneous drawing of remuneration if one became a member of Parliament or a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and mayor. The mayor?s job was also made full-time then.

Before the instruction was issued, former mayor Subrata Mukherjee used to draw both his allowance as MLA from the state government and his remuneration as mayor from the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC). He chose to forgo his civic salary for the legislator?s allowance.

?If the mayor plans to appear in court, then the undertaking he had submitted was obviously a tamasha to fool the people,? argued leader of the Opposition in the CMC Javed Ahmed Khan.

Senior advocate Gitanath Ganguly added: ?CR Das, Kamal Bose and Shyamsundar Gupta did not practise as long as they were mayor. I do think it?s desirable and ethical for the mayor not to appear in court to plead for a client.?

CMC councillor Ajit Panja, too, was miffed with the mayor?s move. ?I did not practise for 11 years when I was a minister in the state Cabinet. After I became a Union minister, I again stopped practise for six years. It is a convention. Ashok Sen, Ram Jethmalani, Bhola Sen? everybody has honoured it.?

Former executive chairman of West Bengal Bar Council Uttam Majumdar said there was no injunction against the mayor offering free legal counsel. ?Bhattacharya is a senior advocate, so he is free from the legal binding of submitting a vakalatnama to appear in court... When Mamata Banerjee was Union minister, she had once appeared in court, but for free.?