Around 700 members of Akola Bar Association (ABA) abstained from court work on Monday to protest the proposed service tax to be imposed on the lawyer community. Recently, it was proposed in the union budget that service tax on lawyers be imposed, which has not gone down well with the legal fraternity in the country.

A resolution to "abstain from work" was passed in an urgently-convened meeting of the general body of ABA held under the chairmanship of advocate Rajesh Deshmukh, president of ABA.

BK Gandhi, a member of the bar council of Maharashtra and Goa, and senior lawyer GB Lohiya strongly supported the protest against imposition of service tax on the lawyers as they are already paying the professional tax.

However, senior advocate SD Tayde has expressed the opinion that the protest against the move of service tax would be a premature as nothing is known about the service tax proposed in the budget of the union budget.

Senior criminal lawyer Satyanarayan Joshi moved the resolution about no work in court on Monday which was passed by voice vote. Hence, the lawyers remained absent from work on Monday.