Staff Reporter :
The leaders of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) on Tuesday strongly requested the Chief Justice to take necessary steps so that the relationship between the bar and the bench is not ruined and no misunderstanding is created.
The request in a written statement was placed to the Chief Justice’s office on Tuesday morning. Before that all the 14 leaders of the SCBA executive committee including its President Advocate AM Amin Uddin and Secretary Barrister Ruhul Quddus Kazal signed the paper.
The leaders said in the statement that recently one or two High Court division benches had behaved rudely with the lawyers during the hearing of a case which counters the dignity of the lawyers of the apex court of the country.
The association expects more tolerance from the court in the case of imposition of fines against lawyers for filing or conducting cases or in case of issuing contempt of court rules against them, read the statement.
Earlier on Monday evening, the SCBA held an emergency meeting and took the decision to file the complaint about the disharmony between the bar and the benches. “It is unfortunate that a trend of neglecting the lawyers of the Supreme Court in different ways during the hearing of cases by one or two High Court benches is being noticed. The Supreme Court Bar Association believes that this undesirable behavior is deteriorating the good relations between the bar and the bench,” also read the statement.
Following a writ petition a High Court bench of Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore and Justice Mohammad Ullah on Sunday last issued contempt of court rule against two Supreme Court lawyers, Barrister Syed Sayedul Haque Sumon and Advocate Ishrat Hassan.
The court also asked them to deposit Tk 100 each in the Supreme Court as cost since the lawyers had wasted court’s time.
The two lawyers appeared in a hearing of a writ petition that was filed challenging the legality of a Bangladesh Bar Council gazette notification permitting a law graduate, Mohammad Zumman Siddique, son of a High Court division judge, to practice law in the High Court even though he could not qualify in the enrollment examination.
After primary hearing, the HC bench of Justice Tariq ul Hakim and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir on December 18 last year stayed the effectiveness of the gazette notification and issued rule asking the Bar Council to explain as to why the gazette should not be declared illegal.
But later the rule was heard by the HC bench of Justice Gobinda Chandra Tagore and Justice Mohammad Ullah who finally discharged the rule and issued contempt rule against the two lawyers.
Meanwhile, several Supreme Court lawyers on Monday gathered in a symbolic protest programme after being aggrieved by the HC order that asked the lawyers to deposit Tk 200 as cost in the case.
Supreme Court lawyers deposited Tk 1 only per head in a paper box to make Tk 200, an amount that was asked to deposit.
