Hearings in the courtroom of the Calcutta High Court judge who has been accused by a section of lawyers of being biased in favour of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari resumed on Wednesday.
Hearings in the courtroom could not take place on Monday and Tuesday as a large number of lawyers boycotted the judge to protest the alleged bias and allegedly prevented other lawyers from entering the courtroom.
Kolkata police have started two cases — in Hare Street and Lake police stations — in connection with posters against the judge put up on the high court premises as well as on the wall of his house in south Kolkata’s Jodhpur Park.
A senior officer at Lalbazar said on Wednesday they had collected CCTV footage from both locations and were trying to identify the people who put up the posters.
Both cases have been registered under Indian Penal Code sections dealing with defamation, printing or engraving defamatory matter, causing intentional insult to provoke breach of peace and common intention.
TV channel ABP Ananda reported on Wednesday that West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose spoke to Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal, state chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi and home secretary B.P. Gopalika on Tuesday, following which the police action was initiated.
In the high court on Wednesday, the secretary of the Calcutta High Court Bar Association, Biswabrata Basu Mallik, appeared before the judge and submitted that henceforth no member of the association would take part in any demonstration in front of his courtroom or prevent any lawyer from entering the courtroom.
The secretary also requested the judge not to pass any order in the absence of a state panel lawyer in any case.
The judge assured Basu Mallik that no ex-parte order would be issued except in urgent cases and requested him to try to maintain the “dignity of the court”.
After Basu Mallik’s assurance to the judge, lawyers who had assembled in front of the courtroom vacated the spot.
Later in the day, the judge informed advocate-general S.N. Mookherjee that several state panel lawyers were still abstaining from cases listed to be heard by him, as a result of which the proceedings in those cases were hampered.
Around 4pm, bar association leaders informed Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava that the lawyers who were still protesting and not entering the judge’s courtroom did not have the association’s backing.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the high court, former West Bengal advocate-general Jayanta Mitra and former Supreme Court judge Justice Ashok Ganguli publicly criticised the agitating lawyers.
