TMC's Jay Prakash attacks Calcutta HC over PIL filed seeking probe into increasing assets of TMC, BJP leaders
Aug 19, 2022
Kolkata [West Bengal], August 19 : Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Jay Prakash Majumdar attacked the Calcutta High Court regarding the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed over the increasing assets of TMC, BJP and other leaders.
According to him, some judges in the High Court are acting as agents of political parties. He further said that High Court has got no right to listen over a case regarding increasing assets.
He raised questions about filing a PIL over the increasing assets of the 19 TMC leaders. He also said that High Court judges should refrain from acting politically.
"Someone files a case against BJP leaders and someone files a case against TMC leaders. This is only happening because many judicial institutions including the Calcutta High Court have lost their neutral position. Now, the judges are acting based on their personal bias. We saw its recent example in Jharkhand, where the Supreme Court came heavily against the Jharkhand High Court for entertaining a PIL against CM Hemant Soren when there was no FIR. This is a very alarming situation," Majumdar said.
This comes after, two PILs were filed on August 8 and August 18 respectively, at the Calcutta High Court.
On August 18, a PIL was filed at the Calcutta High Court alleging a multifold increase in the assets of 17 opposition leaders, since they last disclosed their assets through affidavits. The list included some big names like Suvendu Adhikari from BJP, Md. Selim from CPI (M) and Abdul Mannan from Congress.
Majumdar also criticized BJP over the CBI raids at Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia's residence on Friday.
"It is another attempt to divert the democratic process in the country. BJP is afraid after the 'Bihar Syndrome' that it may not be able to cross 220 seats in the 2024 elections. That's why BJP is trying to use central agencies to gain power, just as they did in Maharashtra. BJP-RSS doesn't want a multi-party system. These are clear signs of 'Gestapo Syndrome'."
Earlier, on August 8, the Division Bench of Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj gave the direction to make Enforcement Directorate (ED) a party in another PIL filed against 19 TMC leaders. After this, another PIL was filed against the leaders of the BJP, Congress, and CPI(M).
In this PIL, the petitioner had appealed for an investigation by any independent investigative agency in the matter. Also, the petitioner appealed the PIL to be attached with the original case, where the Calcutta HC had asked ED to be made a party.
As per the allegations in the PIL, the assets of the 17 political leaders have increased multiple times in the last 5-10 years.
The 17 leaders named in the PIL are Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, Shamik Bhattacharya, Agnimitra Paul, Saumitra Khan, Sisir Adhikari, Dibyendu Adhikari, Anupam Hazra, Jitendra Tiwary, Silbhadra Dutta, Mihir Goswami, Manoj Kumar Oraon Biswajit Sinha, Md. Selim, Tanmoy Bhattacharya, and Abdul Mannan.