Lawyers protest Calcutta chief justice’s decision to reassign case

Differences have emerged among members of the bar association of the Calcutta high court after a section of lawyers wrote to acting chief justice Rajesh Bindal on July 22 threatening to boycott his court unless he recalled his order transferring a civil case from the court of Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya instead of addressing the latter’s concern about technical glitches.

The case Justice Bhattacharyya was hearing was assigned to the division bench headed by Justice Harish Tandon.

Justice IP Mukherjee, who is a member of the five-judge bench headed by Justice

KOLKATA:

Bindal, on Monday held a meeting with members of the bar association and discussed the issue.

“We are not disclosing the outcome of today’s meeting. We will take it up at a meeting of the lawyers on Tuesday evening,” an office-bearer of the bar association said on condition of anonymity.

The sequence of events started on July 19: Justice Bhattacharyya, who reacted sharply on July 16 when technical glitches disrupted the virtual hearing of the civil case, passed a strongly-worded order when he found that the case was transferred to the division bench of Justice Tandon.

In his 10-page order, Justice Bhattacharyya criticised the court administration as well as acting chief justice on whose orders the case was reassigned.

On July 22, some members of the bar association wrote a four-page letter to Justice Bindal.

“...It is extremely apparent that the sudden assignment to a division bench was made only for the reason that Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya questioned the administrative side of the high court for not doing its required job…..” wrote the lawyers in their letter, a copy of which HT has seen.

“We are not questioning that fact that you in the capacity of an acting chief justice can definitely assign a matter…however the question here is the time and matter coupled with to whom i.e. which bench,” the letter said.