Kolkata, (Samajweekly) After the Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Supratim Bhattacharya now the division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hirnamay Bhattacharya too have refused fast-track hearing on a plea of Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress national general secretary.
Banerjee had challenged the order of the single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha allowing central agencies to question him in a matter related to school recruitment case in West Bengal.
On Friday morning as Banerjee counsel’s approached the division bench led by Justice Talukdar, the latter refused fast-track hearing stating that there were some other pending hearings and verdicts in the matters scheduled for the day. Justice Talukdar also verbally advised Banerjee’s counsel to approach a vacation bench, considering that the Calcutta High Court will be going for summer vacation from Monday.
Refused there, Banerjee counsel approached the division bench led by Justice T.S. Sivagnanam. However, that bench too refused hearing and gave the same advice of approaching the vacation bench.
On Thursday, Justice Sinha’s bench while allowing the central agencies to question Abhishek Banerjee and expelled youth Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh in the matter also imposed a penalty of Rs 25 lakh on each of them.
Abhishek Banerjee’s name surfaced after another Kuntal Ghosh wrote letters to a local police station as well as to the judge of a lower court accusing the central agencies of putting pressure on him to name the Trinamool general secretary in the alleged scam.
Initially, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had empowered the central agencies for questioning Abhishek Banerjee. But he approached the Supreme Court in the matter. Following the order of the Supreme Court, two related cases in the matter were transferred to the bench of Justice Sinha.
