HC judge facing lawyer protests in Kolkata gave two orders going against TMC govt

On Monday, when Justice Mantha was to hear several cases, a section of the lawyers staged a protest outside his courtroom, disrupting the proceedings, and resolved not to take part in his court.

Justice Mantha’s petition against the lawyers saying they had obstructed their colleagues too from appearing in his court is listed before a Division Bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj.

In December last year, Justice Mantha had given protection to Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition, directing the state police not to register any more FIRs against him without the High Court’s permission. Adhikari had petitioned that 26 FIRs had been registered against him in different police stations to prevent him from performing his duties as MLA.

Before that, Justice Mantha had removed the protection granted to Maneka Gambhir, the sister-in-law of Abhishek Banerjee, in a money laundering case.

Justice Mantha, 56, did his schooling from Kolkata, before pursuing law at University College of Law, Nagpur University, followed by an LL.M. in Commercial Corporate Law at King’s College, London.

He was enrolled as an Advocate with the Bar Council of West Bengal in December 1991 and as a Senior Advocate in July 2015, before being elevated as Additional Judge of the Calcutta High Court in 2017. Two years later, he became a Permanent Judge.

Among those who criticised the lawyers’ action was Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who had to face similar protests last April after he ordered a CBI probe into the teachers’ recruitment scam in government schools in the state.

“I won’t take the name of any courtroom, but it is true that attempts are being made to terrorise the judiciary system in West Bengal. Our judiciary system is not so weak that it will crumble under such attempts. I have been a practising lawyer at the Calcutta High Court for 23 years and I have been a judge of this court for five years. I have never seen an incident like this before,” Justice Gangopadhyay told reporters Tuesday, on the sidelines of an event.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly also condemned the protesting lawyers. “It is very common that one might not like the order of a single Bench. There is a provision to appeal against that order in a higher court and especially in the Supreme Court. But a judge cannot be threatened like this. This is nothing but an attack on the judiciary. It will have long-term negative impact on the judiciary system,” Ganguly said.

The BJP accused the TMC of trying to influence the judiciary. BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh said, “The TMC wants to control everything. It has successfully politicised police, administration, government employees and other institutions. People only had hope in the judiciary and some judges who are not relenting under pressure. Now attempts are being made to threaten them.”

Ghosh also alleged that the protesting lawyers owed allegiance to the TMC, adding that blocking of proceedings in the courtroom of Justice Mantha “should be considered a black day in the history of Indian judiciary”.

The TMC said the BJP should not be talking about propriety. Its Rajya Sabha MP Santanu Sen said, “Those who have brought the CBI, ED, NIA, and Income Tax under their control and use them against the Opposition for political dividends are saying this! Even they tried to gain control of the judiciary… These remarks only reflect their frustration at not winning any election in West Bengal.”