The Ahmedabad court strike entered its sixth day on October 9, with more than 16,000 cases reportedly stalled as lawyers continued their protest against the proposed Gujarat Rent Bill, 2026. The shutdown affected the City Civil and Sessions Court, Small Causes Court, Family Court, metropolitan criminal courts and Ahmedabad Rural Court, leaving litigants and witnesses who had travelled to the courts without hearings.
According to Nav Gujarat Samay – Ahmedabad, the Ahmedabad Bar Association has said the strike will continue until October 10 unless the state government provides a written assurance on the lawyers’ demands. Court entrances were closed from Thursday morning at the City Civil, Small Causes and Metropolitan courts, and litigants, witnesses and other lawyers were stopped from entering the premises.
The disruption has affected people who had travelled from distant locations for scheduled hearings. With hearings adjourned across several court jurisdictions, the immediate effect has been a further accumulation of pending matters. The report does not specify how many hearings were rescheduled or when the affected cases will next be listed.
Lawyers held demonstrations inside the court complexes, putting up canopies and arranging chairs for a peaceful but firm protest. Young lawyers, described in the report as members of Generation Z, also joined the demonstrations. At the metropolitan court, junior lawyers symbolically burned copies of the proposed rent legislation to register their opposition.
The rent legislation is not the only issue now linked to the strike. Lawyers are also demanding implementation of an Advocates Protection Act and action on the enforcement of the Supreme Court’s Arnesh Kumar judgment. The judgment is cited by criminal lawyers in connection with arrests in offences punishable with imprisonment of up to seven years.
Criminal lawyers at the Ghee Kanta Metropolitan Court alleged that investigating police officers are required to place reasons before the court when deciding whether to arrest an accused in such cases. They alleged that police officers do not consistently provide those reasons, and said this was affecting the work and income of criminal lawyers. The lawyers have asked the state law and home departments to issue immediate instructions to the police and have urged Bar Council office-bearers to raise the issue with the Union government.
The strike has also exposed divisions within the legal community. One group supports continuing the complete shutdown, while another wants court work to resume. The report quotes the working president of the Ahmedabad Bar Association as alleging that earlier decisions were taken arbitrarily without consulting ordinary lawyers. There have also been demands to remove working vice-president I.D. Pathan from office over alleged political association.
The proposed Gujarat Rent Bill is therefore part of a wider confrontation involving legal practice, police procedure and the administration of courts. For citizens, the immediate issue remains access to scheduled hearings and the uncertainty surrounding the next dates in thousands of cases. The bar association’s stated deadline is October 10, when the continuation of the strike will depend on whether the government provides the written assurance sought by the lawyers.
