Ghaziabad, Feb 18 (IANS): Lawyers in Ghaziabad did not attend the courts Wednesday in response to a call by the lawyers' action committee for a boycott in the light of their years' old objection to transferring of cases from Agra to Etawah.

The Ghaziabad Bar Association president Ram Autar Gupta said that after the transfer of cases from Agra to Etawah the action committee decided to suspend the work in all the 22 district courts in western Uttar Pradesh.

"Although the lawyers strike for the High Court bench in Western Uttar Pradesh is 34 years old but this time the lawyers have determined not to bow down before any trick so the strike has been intensified in all the 22 districts of western Uttar Pradesh," he said.

Earlier, the chief justice of Allahabad High Court had transferred the cases of Meerut courts to Moradabad, that time also the lawyers boycotted courts and the cases were sent back to Meerut.

In the latest incident, the chief justice has transferred Agra cases to Etawah. Such arbitrary actions were viewed by lawyers as against public interest, hence the lawyers are determined to go on strike, Gupta added.

According to Gupta, the bar associations in all the 22 districts of western Uttar Pradesh have given the call to boycott the courts. There is a complete halt in court proceedings in the west Uttar Pradesh districts.

"We are determined not to restore work in the courts till we get the work returned to their jurisdictional areas," he said.

"We had met the union law minister who assured us to do the needful which would facilitate the government in setting up the bench at the earliest," he added.