Judge vs Judge: SC takes suo moto cognisance over Calcutta HC's order, hearing on Saturday
The Supreme Court has taken suo moto cognisance of the controversy between the Calcutta High Court's single-judge bench order and division bench decision
The ongoing controversy over West Bengal's fake caste certificate case between the Calcutta High Court and the division court has been taken up by the Supreme Court.
The case will be heard by a five-judge bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud on Saturday after it took suo moto cognisance in the matter.
The other four members of the bench will be justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant, and Aniruddha Bose.
The case title "In Re: Orders of Calcutta High Court dated 24.01.2024 AND 25.01.2024 and Ancillary Issues," arose out of some orders passed by Calcutta High Court's single judge bench and division bench disagreeing with each other.
In the HC order, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay has accused Justice Soumen Sen, who is heading the division bench, of acting for a political party in West Bengal.
The controversy erupted after a single judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay sidelined HC's division bench order and directed the CBI to begin its probe into the fake caste certificate matter.
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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 need to be relooked if the Supreme Court thinks so.
Justice Sen's acts were aimed to save some political party in power, and are a clear misconduct, said Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, reported ANI.
Fake Case Certificates Scam in Bengal
The matter came to the fore after a petition in HC alleged the issuance of fake caste certificates to employees to ease their admission to medical courses.
On January 24, the single judge bench of Justice Gangopadhyay asked the West Bengal Police to hand over documents related to the matter to the CBI. However, the order was stayed by the single judge's order after it was mentioned before a division bench of Justice Sen and Uday Kumar.
The matter was again taken by Justice Gangopadhyay's single judge bench and it asked the state police to give the paper to CBI. However, the division bench on Thursday did not let the order be approved. In the end, the single-judge bench passed the remark against the judge on January 25.
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