Despite an order of the Supreme Court against it, lawyers across the country went on a day's token strike on Wednesday partially affecting the functioning of the judiciary, barring in the Supreme Court.
They were protesting against a proposal for setting up of Lok Adalats in every department of public utility as a conciliatory measure to resolve disputes and reduce the number of pending cases.
In the capital, work in three districts courts of Tis Hazari, Karkardooma and Patiala House was affected even as a special court pronounced the death sentence on three convicts in the Parliament House attack case.
Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) secretary Ashok Arora said the Bar was 'in disagreement with the apex court ruling, but members attended the court to avoid any inconvenience to litigants'.
Despite a boycott call by the Bar Council of India (BCI), some lawyers did appear in the Delhi high court, but judicial work was badly affected in the other three metros, namely Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
Reports from Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Jharkhand and some other states also said that functioning of the judiciary was badly affected.
BCI vice-chairman Adish C Agarwal and Delhi Bar Council chairman K C Mittal in a joint press conference in Delhi said that the strike by lawyers was in the 'public interest and not in the interest of lawyers'.
They said a decision regarding filing a review petition against Tuesday's judgment of a Constitutional Bench of the apex court, would be taken at a meeting of lawyers at Guwahati on December 25.
Terming the amendments in the Legal Services Authorities Act as 'unconstitutional', they said the Lok Adalats would 'result in touts and busybodies exploiting gullible and innocent litigants'.
Bar associations all over the country criticised the Union government for making the amendment in the Act without taking them into confidence.
Delhi High Court Bar Association secretary B K Sharma claimed that work in the court was 'virtually paralysed'.
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