Kolkata: A judge of the Calcutta High Court Wednesday recused himself from hearing a petition filed by Mamata Banerjee challenging the election results of Nandigram, but not before imposing a Rs 5 lakh fine on the West Bengal CM and making some scathing observations.
Justice Kaushik Chanda recused himself after Banerjee — in her petition filed on 23 June — questioned his judicial integrity, mentioning his past association with the BJP.
Calling Banerjee’s petition “calculated psychological offensive and vilification adopted to seek recusal”, Justice Chanda said such efforts “need to be firmly repulsed”.
“The petitioner seeks recusal since she apprehends that her objection against my confirmation as a permanent Judge of this Court is known to me. In my view, such grounds also cannot justify recusal. The petitioner cannot seek recusal based upon her own consent or objection with regard to the appointment of a Judge,” Justice Chanda wrote in the 13-page order.
He added that going by that argument, the election petition cannot be tried before this court, “since the petitioner, in her capacity as the Chief Minister of the State, has either objected or gave consent to the appointments of most of the Hon’ble Judges of this Court”.
CM Mamata Banerjee lost the election to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram by a narrow margin of 1,956 votes. Adhikari, a former cabinet colleague of Banerjee, had switched to the BJP last year, and after his win, became the Leader of Opposition in the Bengal assembly.
Pointing out that the past association of a judge with a political party by itself cannot form apprehension of bias, Justice Chanda said, “This proposition, if allowed to be accepted, would be destructive to the long-lived and deep-rooted notion of neutrality associated with the justice delivery system and lead to the unfair practice of Bench hunting to resist a fair adjudication by an unscrupulous litigant.
“A Judge cannot be said to be biased because of a litigant’s own perception and action. It is ludicrous to believe that the petitioner would expect a favourable order from a Judge whose appointment she has consented to and vice versa,” he pointed out in the order.
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Other recusals
Justice Chanda is the third senior judge, in the past two weeks, to recuse himself from hearing petitions related to Bengal. The other two are Supreme Court judges — Justices Indira Banerjee and Aniruddha Bose.
Justices Banerjee and Bose, who are from West Bengal, had willingly recused themselves from hearing petitions related to post-poll violence in the state and the Narada case, while Justice Chanda de-listed the CM’s case from his list after her petition seeking recusal.
Bengal’s Law Minister Moloy Ghatak called the two instances of recusal by the SC judges and Justice Chanda “different” because the SC judges had done so to maintain “neutrality”.
The two instances, Ghatak said, “cannot be compared, as the SC judges did the right thing”.
“They recused themselves for the sake of judicial integrity. But Justice Chanda’s case is different. We had to plead for the recusal and write a letter to the acting Chief Justice, because we know his political background,” said Ghatak.
Ghatak added that what the SC judges did were examples of “good gestures”.
“Justice Banerjee and Justice Bose recused themselves from hearing the petitions related to the chief minister and to me, because Bengal is their home state. I remember Justice Ashim Kumar Roy recused himself from hearing Madan Mitra’s case on an earlier occasion, because they live in the same locality. This is neutrality.”
He, however, refrained from commenting on the order and the observations made by Justice Chanda Wednesday. “I would not comment on the order, but we submitted the petition seeking recusal for a reason.”
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