Most judges to skip foundation stone ceremony of Circuit Bench

While the Chief Justice and three other judges of the Calcutta High Court have left for Jalpaiguri to attend the foundation stone laying ceremony of the new building of the Circuit Bench to be held on Saturday,a majority of the judges will skip the function,said a source. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Chief Justice Jaynarayan Patel will lay the foundation stone jointly for the new building. According to the invitation card,Justices Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta,Pratap Kumar Roy,Ashim Banerjee and Prasenjit Mondal will also be present in the programme with the Chief Justice. It also mentioned that the foundation stone laying programme would be administered jointly by the Judicial and Law Department of the state government and the Registrar General of the High Court. Earlier,Mamata was scheduled to lay the foundation stone and the state government had invited the Chief Justice to “attend the event”. This did not go down well with the judiciary with judges,who were of the opinion that it was a programme of the Calcutta High Court where the Chief Justice could not be made a “mere spectator”. Then,Law minister Malay Ghatak,on August 28,met the Chief Justice to resolve the issue.