Orissa High Court has emphasised the need for preservation of dignity of the lawyers as a community and introspection among those claiming to be advocates as to whether they have the qualities of being so.

The single-judge bench of Justice C.R. Dash stressed it in an interim order which broke a long-drawn impasse over the police-lawyer scuffle and led to resumption of work by the high court lawyers after cease work for 78 days.

In the order, Justice Dash directed the state government to form a committee within seven days “to submit a report suggesting ways, means and modalities for checking recurrence of such incident in future within two months”.

Justice Dash expected an advocate to be “a man of dignity, who is disciplined in his utterance and conduct, one who is suave, a man who commands respect in society, a wise man, a logical man, a prudent man, one who is brilliant in his performance and steady in his perseverance, one who is courageous, broad and level headed, one who has all the human qualities of bench mark value like compassion, empathy, love for truth and justice, and in one word someone who is a gentleman”.

“If one claims himself to be an advocate, he must ask himself whether he has any of the above qualities, whether he is disciplined in his conduct and utterances and whether he is a gentleman,” Justice Dash stressed in his November 14 interim order.

“If a lawyer’s dignity is lost, everything is lost for him. It is like the virtue of a chaste woman and health of a living being. If that one is lost, everything is lost,” Justice Dash observed, adding that “the dignity of the court also depends on the dignity of the lawyers in the society”.

“Nowadays, if someone throws a stone, that may land on the head of a person, who may claim himself to be an advocate, though he may not be a real advocate in the true sense of the term. Any person having a licence granted by the bar council is technically treated as an advocate. But, in fact, an advocate is one who has got a standing practice in litigation side,” Justice Dash further observed while directing for formation of a committee.

According to the direction, the court expected the state government to form the committee under the chairmanship of a retired high court judge and additional chief secretary of the home department as member secretary with nine other members. The other members being secretary law department, director-general of police, inspector general of police (headquarters), police commissioner Bhubaneswar-Cuttack, president and secretary of the Orissa High Court Bar Association and three advocates selected by the association, two of them having at least 35 to 40 years “of practising experience”.

The court has fixed last week of January for further proceedings in the case, along with the committee’s report, while quashing all the cases registered by the police related to the police-lawyer scuffle on August 28 and assault on policemen in civil uniform on the high court premises on October 29.