Calcutta High Court refuses to expedite hearing of Abhishek Banerjee’s petition
Kolkata (IANS) | A division bench of the Calcutta High Court comprising Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Supratim Bhattacharya and later Chief Justice T.S. A bench of Justices Sivagnanam and Hiranmoy Bhattacharya on Friday refused an urgent hearing on a plea filed by Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. Banerjee had challenged the order of a single bench of Justice Amrita Sinha allowing central agencies to interrogate her in a case related to the school recruitment scam in West Bengal.
When Banerjee’s lawyers approached the bench headed by Justice Talukdar on Friday morning, Justice Talukdar refused to fast-track the hearing saying that there were pending some other hearings and judgments in the matters scheduled for the day. Justice Talukdar advised Banerjee’s counsel to verbally approach a vacation bench, noting that the Calcutta High Court was going into summer vacation from Monday.
On being refused there, Banerjee’s counsel told Justice T.S. approached the bench headed by Sivagannam. However, that bench also refused to hear and advised it to go to the vacation bench.
Justice Sinha’s bench on Thursday allowed central agencies to interrogate Abhishek Banerjee and expelled Youth Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh in this case and also imposed a fine of Rs 25 lakh each on both.
Abhishek Banerjee’s name surfaced after Kuntal Ghosh wrote to a local police station and a trial court judge, accusing central agencies of pressuring him to name the Trinamool general secretary in the alleged scam.
Initially, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had given powers to central agencies to interrogate Abhishek Banerjee. But he approached the Supreme Court in this matter. After the order of the Supreme Court, two cases related to this matter were transferred to the bench of Justice Sinha.
–IANS
