Hundreds of train commuters on the Tambaram-Chennai Beach section were stranded on Sunday for over an hour as lawyers squatted on train tracks between St. Thomas Mount and Guindy Railway Stations.
Lawyers staged similar protests in Mogappair west and on Cathedral Road also. The agitators, who had come to the city from various parts of the State ahead of the All India Bar Examination, were protesting against it.
The nation-wide open-book objective-type qualifying test was held in English and several regional languages across the country. In Chennai, 800 lawyers, who had passed out of law colleges in 2009-10 were required to appear for the examination, which would test their ability to practise law. This is the first time such an examination is being held across the country.
The examination was being held at AJS Nidhi Higher Secondary School in Alandur, Stella Maris College on Cathedral Road and Mar Gregorios College in Mogappair.
Soon after the examination began, disgruntled candidates stormed out of the exam venue, assembled on the railway tracks and roads outside. The protestors, including women, raised slogans against the move to introduce the examination. Police cordoned off a portion of the busy Cathedral Road, cutting off vehicle movement. Personnel from Chennai Suburban Police, Government Railway Police and Railway Protection Force tried to disperse the protestors but to no avail.
It was irate train commuters, who bore the brunt of the protest which lasted from noon till around 1.15 p.m., who succeeded in getting the protestors off the track.
Keywords: All India Bar Examination, lawyer protest
It is time to record a public grievance that the lawyers community in TN, as their students too, have a general habit of resorting to agitations. Not long ago, they had an agitation even in the High Court compound. So are its student community with agitations at the drop of the hat. Their latest fad is to hijack buses on the ground of celebrating what is claimed to be ‘bus days’(?) and creating confusion alround. Such periodical indisciplined behavior is not present among the students’ and lawyers’ communities in other parts of the country. It is time the sociologists and educations and the bar councils would need to pay special attention to this growing malaise.
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