Supreme Court special sitting today to hear conflict between Calcutta High Court judges
Jan 27, 2024
New Delhi [India], January 27 : The Supreme Court on Saturday will hear the controversy between the Calcutta High Court's single-judge bench order and division bench decision in West Bengal's fake caste certificate matter.
A five-judge bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud is set to hear the matter in a special sitting today.
Besides CJI Chandrachud, the other judges on the bench are justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose.
The case title "In Re: Orders of Calcutta High Court dated January 24, 2024, and January 25 and Ancillary Issues," arose out of some orders passed by Calcutta High Court's single judge bench and division bench disagreeing with each other.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay in his order has accused Justice Soumen Sen, who is heading the division bench, of acting for a political party in the West Bengal state."
A single judge of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had directed to ignore Calcutta High Court's division bench order and asked the CBI to begin its probe into the fake caste certificate matter.
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay said that Justice Sen is acting clearly for some political party in the WB State and, therefore, the orders passed by the bench led by Justice Sen are required to be relooked if the Supreme Court thinks so.
He further said that Justice Sen has done it to save some political party in power and his (Justice Sen) actions are tantamount to misconduct.
The matter arises out of a petition in High Court whereby it was alleged that rampantly issuing fake caste certificates to many persons to ease their admission to medical courses.
The single judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay on January 24 asked the West Bengal Police to hand over documents related to the matter to the CBI. After some time, the matter was mentioned before a division bench of Justice Sen and Uday Kumar, which stayed the single judge's order.
The single judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay again took up the matter on and asked the West Bengal police to give paper to CBI. The division bench on Thursday did not agree with the single-judge bench decision.
The single judge again heard the matter on January 25 and passed certain remarks against Justice Sen.