Abhijit Gangopadhyay to join BJP. A look at the former Calcutta High Court judge’s controversies

Former judge of the Calcutta High Court, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, announced on March 5 that he will likely join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by March 7, ahead of Lok Sabha 2024 polls.

Gangopadhyay, who was scheduled to retire in August 2024, is all set to create history by becoming the first High Court judge in recent memory to resign and join a political party. He sent his resignation letter to President Droupadi Murmu, with copies to the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, and the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, TS Sivagnanam, on Tuesday morning.

There had been speculations that Gangopadhyay may contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls from West Bengal’s Tamluk constituency on a BJP ticket. The constituency has been a bastion of the ruling Trinamool Congress, the party that has held it since the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

Sparked Many Rows

Justice Gangopadhyay has been involved in many controversies during his tenure at the Calcutta High Court since May 2018. He defied orders of larger Benches, had run-ins with lawyers and the ruling Trinamool Congress party in West Bengal, had a dispute with a fellow judge at the High Court and also gave an interview to a TV channel on a case he was hearing. His rulings on education-related issues in the Mamata Banerjee-ruled state stirred political debates, too.

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Since 2022, he has passed many orders directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) to investigate the alleged school jobs scam in West Bengal. Justice Gangopadhyay terminated more than 32,000 teacher appointments in one of his orders. Later, a Division Bench stayed the order.

TV Interviews 

Last year, Justice Gangopadhyay was also pulled by the Supreme Court for giving an interview on a scam while hearing the case related to it. He had given an interview to a local Bengali news channel and talked about the role of TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee while he was dealing with a batch of petitions regarding the school jobs for cash scam. The Supreme Court took objection to it.

“I just want to say that judges have no business granting interviews on matters which are pending. If he said that about the petitioner (Abhishek Banerjee), he has no business participating in the proceedings. The question is whether a judge who has made statements like these about a political personality should be allowed to participate in the hearings. There has to be some process,” CJI DY Chandrachud had said on April 24.

This did not end here. On April 28, the Supreme Court asked the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to reassign the case to another judge, given the need to preserve public confidence in the administration of justice. 

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On the same day, Gangopadhyay issued an order to the Secretary General of the Supreme Court, directing that the documents concerning his removal be produced before him by midnight. The Supreme Court put Gangopadhyay’s order on hold.

Accusing Fellow Judge

In January, Justice Gangopadhyay was again in the news after he accused fellow High Court judge, Justice Soumen Sen, of“acting for a political party in the state”. The allegation came after Justice Sen, who was part of a Division Bench, stayed his order directing the police to hand over documents of the case about the alleged irregularities in MBBS admissions in the state to the CBI.

In December last year, the Calcutta High Court Bar Association had announced the boycott of Justice Gangopadhyay after the judge had ordered the arrest of a lawyer from his courtroom on charges of contempt.

While the order, issued on December 18, was later withdrawn, the association approached the Chief Justice of the High Court and asked him to withdraw all judicial work from Gangopadhyay.

Bengali Theatre

Born in 1962 in Kolkata, Gangopadhyay attended Mitra Institution (Main), a Bengali-medium school in south Kolkata. He completed his graduation from Hazra Law College in Kolkata. He also took part in Bengali theatre. After graduating, he began his career as a West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS) Grade-A officer in Uttar Dinajpur district. But he quit the civil service and began practising as a state advocate in the Calcutta High Court. He was elevated to the post of additional judge in 2018 and became a permanent judge two years later. 

After his resignation, Gangopadhyay praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a very hard-working man while taking digs at the Trinamool Congress, CPM and the Congress.