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The Lucknow Bench of the court said the court is facing problems for the last more than a week since a new panel has been appointed by the state. A division bench of Justice Sudhir Agrawal and Justice RN Mishra II said, “Standing counsel or brief holders, as the case may be, appearing in this court, we find are not well-versed with cases, so as to assist this court whenever they are taken up and many a times even the files of cases, which are called, are not available with them.
“We also find, at this stage, another constraint, this court is facing, for the last more than a week i.e. non- availability of competent standing counsel to argue matters. Since a new panel has been made by State and learned standing counsel or brief holders, as the case may be, appearing in this court, we find are not well versed with the cases, so as to assist this court whenever they are taken up and many a times, even the files of cases, which are called, are not available with them,” it said.
Additional Advocate General Ramesh Singh admitted that so far as the panel of standing counsel etc. is concerned, which has been recently published, even Additional Advocate General/Advocate General finds it difficult to sort out a minimum number of competent counsel to be assigned in each court. At this, the bench inquired from the in-charge Legal Remembrancer (LR) MA Abbasi, who informed the court that the he was not aware of all these things since it was taken up by former Legal Remembrancer Rangnath Pandey, who has now become a High Court judge.
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The government had included about 44 lawyers of the previous regime. To its surprise, more than four dozen new government lawyers did not have Advocate On Role number, which is a prima facie proof of practice in high court. Apart from it, five names were repeated for different posts and five were missing from the list. As the issue gathered media attention, the law minister said he did not have any say in the list and came to know about it from media reports.The bench asked the LR to file reply on affidavit regarding the current issue on July 24.