Calcutta High Court on Tuesday extended the stay on disbursement of Rs 10,000 each to 28,000 Durga Puja committees by the Bengal government till Thursday.

On Friday, a division bench headed by acting Chief Justice Debasish Kargupta had issued an interim stay on the puja largess till Tuesday on a PIL by two advocates of the court who challenged the state government’s decision.

“We will decide on the maintainability of the public interest litigation on Wednesday,” Justice Kargupta said on Tuesday after extending the stay.

During the daylong hearing on Tuesday, the government claimed that since the petitioners were not directly affected by the donation to the puja committees, the court should summarily reject the case.

On Friday, the division bench, which consisted of Justice Shampa Sarkar also, had asked the government to come up with replies to some of its queries on Tuesday. The questions were whether there was any guideline and budget allocation for disbursal of the doles and how the government would monitor that the funds were utilised properly by the puja committees.

The court posed those questions following the submission by advocate general Kishore Dutta that the funds were allocated for strengthening its campaign of “Safe Drive Save Life”.

On Tuesday, appearing for the government, Dutta claimed that in the state’s budget for 2018-19, a fund of Rs 1 crore was allocated for community policing. “That funds have been increased to give grants to the puja committees for community policing,” Dutta said.

The advocate general also said courts did not have the right to adjudicate whether a government was spending the money from exchequer properly, and said: “The decision of the government can only be questioned on the floor of the Assembly.”

Senior advocate, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, the counsel appearing for the two petitioners, however, said the state had no legal right to appease a particular community by providing fund for its religious festival.

Senior advocate Shaktinath Mukherjee also argued for the government.

He said the state had the right to spend money, not allocated in the budget, and said: “In next year’s budget, the government will have to make an allocation in this regard.”

Asked by the acting chief justice, the advocate general placed before the court a notification issued by the sate finance department approving the grant to the 28,000 puja committees.