New Delhi: Courtroom number 17 at the Calcutta High Court remains packed with lawyers, petitioners, law interns, media persons and even people nudging their way into the cramped courtroom to get a glimpse of the judge who has been making headlines — Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
Over the last two years, Justice Gangopadhyay has become a household name in West Bengal after he took up a bunch of petitions alleging cash for post scam in West Bengal government-run schools since August 2021.
Since November 2021, the high court judge has ordered 10 CBI probes into the alleged scam and terminated the 1,200-plus “irregular” appointments of assistant teachers, Group C and D staff recruited in primary schools.
Earlier this week, Justice Gangopadhyay ordered the court sheriff to arrest a lawyer who was laughing during the hearing of a widow’s pension petition. The judge held the lawyer guilty of contempt of court.
The Bar Association of the Calcutta High Court has written to Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, seeking all judicial work be withdrawn from Justice Gangopadhyay’s bench. ThePrint has accessed a copy of the letter.
Subsequently, the HC held a special hearing 18 December in which a two-judge bench stayed the arrest of the lawyer, Prosenjit Mukherjee.
“Administration of justice is a stream which has to be kept pure and clean. It has to be kept unpolluted. Administration of justice is not something which concerns the Bench only. It concerns the Bar as well. The Bar is the principal ground for recruiting Judges. No one should be able to raise a finger about the conduct of a lawyer. While conducting the case he functions as an Officer of the Court,” the high court said.
It is well settled that the maintenance of purity of administration of justice to uphold the independence of the judiciary is a sole task of the courts, it said.
“The court should also maintain a judicial restraint and discipline as necessary to the orderly administration of justice as they are all to be effectiveness of the army. The duty of restraint humility should be constant theme of our judges. This quality in making a decision making process is as much necessary for the judges to command, respect as to protect the independence of judiciary,” the bench said.
This is not the first time the judge has faced protest as pro-TMC lawyers boycotted his court for 20 days in April last year and tried to stop others from entering his courtroom.
During one such hearing, Justice Gangopadhyay asked the Trinamool Congress to write the Election Commission to withdraw the party symbol but did not include this remark in his order copy.
Bar Association secretary Biswabrata Basu Mallick. who signed the complaint letter to the Chief Justice, said Justice Gangopadhyay’s actions are due to misguidance. “There are few senior advocates who guide Justice Gangopadhyay, and he is being misled by them. There is no doubt that he also has a political lineage towards the Left and maybe because his health is not well, he tends to lose his temper quite often,” he told ThePrint.
The Bar Association has maintained that boycott would continue till the time the judge tenders an apology.
A graduate from Kolkata’s Hazra Law College, Justice Gangopadhyay was appointed as an additional judge in the Calcutta High Court in 2018. Two years later, he was made a permanent judge.
In August last year, he allowed the media to record proceedings on camera, long before live streaming was given a green signal by the Supreme Court. This led to an outcry from lawyers, who termed the action as turning the court into a ‘bazaar’.
BJP leader and lawyer Priyanka Tibrewal told ThePrint that Justice Gangopadhyay was a soft-target for the Trinamool Congress for showing them the mirror.
“Justice Gangopadhyay is working fearlessly and passing orders as per the constitutional provisions. But he has become a target for the TMC and it’s just not him, Justice Amrita Sinha, Justice Rajshekhar Mantha too have faced the TMC brunt,” she claimed.
It was his orders in the alleged teacher recruitment scam that led to the arrest of Mamata Banerjee’s once close aide and former education minister Partha Chatterjee, who remains in prison. In May 2022, Justice Gangopadhyay at a late-night hearing at 10.30pm ordered the CBI to seal the School Service Commission office within two hours to avoid tampering of evidence.
Justice Gangopadhyay got embroiled in a controversy after he gave a televised interview in an interview last September in which he shared his personal views and course of hearing the recruitment scam. This irked the ruling TMC following which the Supreme Court’s attention was drawn to the interview.
Subsequently, the Chief Justice of India ordered the then acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court in April to reassign the recruitment case to another bench immediately.
Justice Gangopadhyay is due to retire in August 2024 and continues to hear matters related to the alleged recruitment scam and appointments made by the West Bengal Madrasah Commission amongst the significant cases in which the state government is a respondent.
(Edited by Tony Rai)