Calcutta High Court: Lawyers at HC withdraw their protest against Justice Mantha – The Indian Express

The protest had sparked criticisms from judges and intervention by West Bengal Governor CV Anand Bose who directed the TMC government to “protect judiciary”.

Justice Mantha had initiated contempt proceedings against the lawyers for disrupting work at his court and filed a suo motu petition against them which the Division Bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj heard on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, secretary of the Calcutta High Court Bar Association, Biswabrata Basu Mullick, appeared before Justice Mantha and assured him that such an incident would not be repeated in his court in future. Mullick requested Justice Mantha not to pass any ex-parte order in case of non-appearance of lawyers while assuring him that efforts are on to ensure normalcy in the court.

Mullick also wrote a letter to Chief Justice Shrivastava claiming that a few advocates were trying to mislead the court on various issues for personal and political gain. He alleged that these few advocates were trying to spoil the healthy relationship between the Bar and the Bench. “His Lordship should not give importance to the misleading deliberation of the said learned advocates, doing this in order to achieve their personal as well as political gain,” PTI quoted him as writing to the Chief Justice.

Earlier, members of the Bar Association of the High Court accused Justice Mantha of being biased and urged Chief Justice Shrivastava to relieve him from some of the cases.

In a letter to the Chief Justice, the Bar Association members wrote: “A judge’s position of power not only demands discipline and ferocious insight but also becomes as extraneous as an appendage to the chair he sits upon, orphaned of this, which the arrangement of justice delivery considers to be essential. It is with great regret we must proceed to deliberate upon the actions of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha, who has perhaps fallen short of his usual standards in recent times… Let this representation record our humble request for your lordship to relieve Justice Rajshekhar Mantha from his current determination and liberate him from his current responsibilities.”

The lawyers were agitating over some of the orders passed by Justice Mantha, including one passed in last December that gave protection to the Leader of Opposition in Assembly and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari directing the state police not to register any more FIRs against him without the High Court’s permission.

Justice Mantha had also stayed all the FIRs referred to in a petition by Adhikari, wherein he claimed that 26 FIRs had been registered against him in different police stations of the state to prevent him from performing his function as a people’s representative at the instance of the ruling dispensation in the state.

Earlier, Justice Mantha had removed protection granted to Maneka Gambhir, the sister-in-law of TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in a money laundering case.

Meanwhile, Governor Bose reportedly sent a strong message to the state government asking it to “protect the judiciary”, and said that terrorising the judiciary will not be tolerated at any cost. It was learnt that the Governor had summoned the state chief secretary HK Dwivedi, state home secretary BP Gopalika and Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Kumar Goyal late Tuesday evening and instructed them to ensure necessary protection for the judges.

At the meeting, the state government officials assured the Governor that they would ensure the security and safety of the judiciary at any cost. – With PTI