Over the past few months, politics in West Bengal has been rocked by a recruitment scam in which a high-profile politician and several officials have been arrested. However, it is a Calcutta High Court judge who has emerged at the centre of prevailing political storm. In the past one year, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay gave at least 10 orders directing the CBI to investigate irregularities in the recruitment carried out by the West Bengal School Service Commission.
The latest uproar has been around his interview on September 20 to a Bengali television news channel ABP Ananda. While the legal experts are divided as to whether a sitting High Court judge handling high-profile cases can give interviews to news channels, the judge’s statements created further buzz in political circles.
In the interview, he said that Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee should be jailed for three months for alleging that a section of the judiciary was hand in glove with the BJP. “...whatever I am doing is as per the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, which states that judges have freedom of expression but whatever they say has to be under the purview of law,” Justice Gangopadhyay said.
Even if the Supreme Court criticises him and he is removed from judiciary, he will stand by what he has done because “corruption has destroyed India”, he said.
A petition was filed before the Division Bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj to stop the telecast of the interview. The court refused, stating that “the petition is based upon mere apprehension”.
This is not the first time that Justice Gangopadhyay has been the centre of debate in political circles of the State. In August this year, there was a heated exchange between him and a section of lawyers of the Calcutta High Court during a hearing of the recruitment scam.
In March, when his order on CBI inquiry in the recruitment scam was stayed by a Division Bench, he wrote to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court saying his hands were “being tied again and again”, and urged them to “look into the matter and probe the ongoing corruption”.
On several instances, Justice Gangopadhyay had directed the CBI to file FIRs by “the end of the day”, and asked senior officials, president of Boards and commissions and even a Minister to report to the agency for investigation within hours of the order.
While the Trinamool leadership has not reacted to the judge’s remarks, job seekers who are demanding jobs in State-run schools and holding regular protests since the recruitment scam came to light hailed him as a ‘hero’.
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