NEW DELHI, 5 September 2004 — Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee yesterday visited lawyers injured in Friday’s scuffle with police in Lucknow, his parliamentary constituency.

After meeting the injured lawyers in their hospitals, Vajpayee visited Uttar Pradesh state Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.

While strongly condemning Friday’s violent incident, he described the state’s law and order situation as “the worst.” Vajpayee expressed “deep concern” over the “deteriorating” law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.

“This is not an ordinary matter that the entire bar association comes out on the streets and the police go about thrashing them indiscriminately,” Vajpayee told reporters after meeting different lawyers’ groups here.

“What I saw on the television clearly depicted the sorry state of affairs here and I am meeting Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to urge him to tone up his administration,” he said earlier.

Without directly condemning the administration, the former prime minister said, “There can be no denying that the prevailing law and order situation needs a lot of improvement.”

The lawyers refused to withdraw their stir till erring police officials were punished despite Mulayam ordering an inquiry into the police action.

They have termed the police action as a “planned attack” and were particularly sore at deputy inspector general (Lucknow range) Jagmohan Yadav, whom they pointedly accused of leading the attack on them.

On Friday, a minor tiff between police and the former chairman of the Awadh Bar Association turned into a major clash injuring at least 38 lawyers, who later went on a strike halting judicial work in all the courts.

Judicial work at the lower courts in Delhi and Jaipur was also paralyzed yesterday after lawyers went on strike in solidarity with their colleagues in Lucknow.

Meanwhile, the All-India Bar Association, which claims to represent about one million lawyers in the country, said it would settle for nothing short of a judicial inquiry into Friday’s incident.

The Uttar Pradesh government has already announced that a retired Supreme Court judge would probe the incident.

“But we want an inquiry under the Commission of Inquiry Act and the commission should submit its report within three months,” the bar association said.