Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay: The Calcutta HC judge at centre of activism vs propriety debate

This, capped with his February 6 apology to the Advocate General for the heated exchange with him a week ago, were all too familiar scenes for those acquainted with the workings of the bar and the bench in the oldest High Court.

But if there’s one courtroom that has witnessed more drama than any other in the High Court, it’s that of Justice Gangopadhyay – from scuffles to boycotts, charges traded against lawyers and senior colleagues and apologies. Appointed to the High Court in 2018, Justice Gangopadhyay still has six months left before he retires on August 18.

Born on August 19, 1962, Gangopadhyaya, a graduate of Calcutta University’s Hazra Law College, began his career as a Grade A officer of the West Bengal Civil Services. (Express file photo)

With courtrooms routinely turned into political battlegrounds in high-stakes cases, judges are no strangers to political attacks. But many see in Justice Gangopadhyay’s frequent remarks against the ruling TMC and its leader Abhishek Banerjee signs of judicial activism at best and at worst, an open bias.

In a case in which a woman from North Bengal had moved the court seeking a job and compensation after her husband’s death due to Covid, Justice Gangopadhyay made an oral remark about a “bhaipo (nephew)” amassing wealth. This led to TMC MP Kunal Ghosh’s statement that the judge should resign and contest an election against Abhishek Banerjee.

However, a month later, at a public event, Justice Gangopadhyay said he met Ghosh in his chambers over a cup of tea and “became friends.”

But it’s his dogged pursuit of the school recruitment scam in West Bengal that has seen him being called “Aranyadeb (Phantom)” and “crusader” while also being accused of playing into the hands of the BJP in a politically charged state.

The alleged school recruitment scam is one of the biggest scandals to have rocked the state government, leading to the arrest of a senior minister in the Mamata Banerjee Cabinet and other senior Trinamool leaders. The alleged scam also saw Justice Gangopadhyay ordering CBI investigations and terminating more than 32,000 appointments of teachers. Justice Gangopadhyay’s termination order was later stayed by the SC.

“No one has the right to do anything with the Constitution of India. I might have to ask the Election Commission to cancel the recognition of Trinamool Congress as a political party and withdraw its party logo,” he had said in the school teachers recruitment scam case, threatening to summon the entire state Cabinet to court.

In one heated argument in court with the Calcutta Bar Association President Arunava Ghosh in August 2022, Justice Gangopadhyay looked at the reporters in his courtroom and asked them to start recording the exchange on their phones. (Express file photo by Partha Paul)

On December 3 last year, at a function to mark World Disability Day, Justice Gangopadhyay shared the dais with CPI(M) leaders Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya and Kanti Ganguly, the former sports minister in the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government. Incidentally, Bikash Ranjan, a Rajya Sabha MP, is the senior advocate appearing before Justice Gangopadhyay on behalf of writ petitioners in the case seeking Enforcement Directorate probe against Abhishek Banerjee. If there were questions of impropriety about him sharing the platform with someone who appears before him in politically sensitive cases, it didn’t seem to affect Justice Gangopadhyay.

Among those he has worked with, some swear by Justice Gangopadhyay’s honest track record and non-partisanship, even if they question his methods.

“He probably has a view that you have to adopt different methods to tackle corruption. But it’s not that he has any love for one party. In fact, he quit his civil services job after seeing massive corruption under the Left government. But despite his intentions, this may not be the way to do things,” said a former judge of the Calcutta High Court.

After the tug of war with the Bar and his senior colleague last month, Justice Gangopadhya’s roster was changed on February 4 to industrial disputes and labour matters — a relatively non-controversial subject – but the judge still made headlines, reportedly holding court until 10.30pm on February 9 hearing provident fund cases.

Born on August 19, 1962, Gangopadhyaya, a graduate of Calcutta University’s Hazra Law College, began his career as a Grade A officer of the West Bengal Civil Services. It is learnt that as a land revenue officer, when the judge acted on local corruption, he faced death threats which prompted him to resign and move back to Kolkata. He then began his legal practice and was the panel lawyer for several insurance companies and the insurance regulator.

Some in the bar attribute the judge’s overzealousness to populism rather than party politics. Since the judge’s courtroom is not virtual, journalists occupy the last row in the courtroom, which, lawyers say, Justice Gangopadhyay is “quite aware” of given his propensity for remarks that are headline-grabbing.

In one heated argument in court with the Calcutta Bar Association President Arunava Ghosh in August 2022, Justice Gangopadhyay looked at the reporters in his courtroom and asked them to start recording the exchange on their phones. When Ghosh pointed out that videography was not allowed inside the court, Justice Gangopadhyay said that he would allow it in his court. “Your lordship is a very honest man, but my lord, don’t turn the court into a bazaar…. This is earning a very bad name for you in the Bar,” Ghosh said.

Though it was his unprecedented hour-long interview to ABP Ananda in September 2022 – during which the judge openly questioned the financials of Abhishek Banerjee – that made news and which the Supreme Court took exception to, it is not unusual for the judge to speak to television news reporters outside the court on issues being heard in his court.

Unusually for a judge, television news cameras swarm around him even during personal outings.

“How much money is the government spending in the Supreme Court to stop the investigation,” Justice Gangopadhyay had said to journalists on West Bengal moving the apex court against a central probe in the school jobs recruitment scam.

Justice Gangopadhyay is known to extend his “crusader” side beyond politics. Take, for instance, his order in August 2022, when hearing a family case in the Jalpaiguri bench of the Calcutta High Court. To patch up matters between a squabbling couple, Justice Gangopadhyay tried a rather unusual approach — a paid trip to Puri to sort out their differences.

“…this court should take a different gesture by sending the parties to a tourist spot for 5-6 days through Kolkata,” he ordered, while fixing an itinerary for the couple and directing the court registry to book the train tickets. “This court hopes and expects that the parties will lead a beautiful life hereafter and forever,” the judge had recorded at the end of the order and even transferred the case to the Kolkata main bench for a report on whether the trip was successful.

However, on learning that the couple parted ways after spending just a day in Puri, the disappointed judge said that no further orders are required “when I find that my endeavour for settling the dispute has failed.”

Off court, Justice Gangopadhyay’s rockstar image has earned him a fair share of visitors to his chambers. Apart from journalists who routinely call on him, a young singer, a participant in reality television shows, was invited by the judge and felicitated in his court chambers.

Like with everything else to do with the Calcutta High Court, the legal fraternity has mixed reactions to Justice Gangopadhyay’s ‘judicial activism’.

“What is happening is most unfortunate. Every judge has to behave in a dignified way and you are entitled to pass your orders but not publicly defend your orders,” Justice Indira Banerjee, former Supreme Court judge whose parent High Court was the Calcutta High Court, told The Indian Express. “The majesty of the Court lies in its restraint,” the judge added.

For the BJP in the state, though, Justice Gangopadhyay is a “people’s judge.”

“It is not that his orders are helping BJP workers. They are for the common people. He is their judge. Justice must not only be done but also seen to be done,” said Priyanka Tibrewal, advocate and secretary of the state BJP unit. Tibrewal also dismissed whispers in the Bar of a post-retirement political career for the judge as “baseless rumours.”