Complainant withdraws conflict of interest case, made DDCA counsel

A week after Dutta withdrew the complaint, he has been appointed as the standing counsel of the DDCA by the executive committee in which Khanna is a member.

Giving reasons for having a ‘re-look’ at the conflict of interest of Khanna, Dutta said, “I studied the facts and had a discussion with Khanna. Khanna told me that he does not sit in the selection committee meetings. Hence, after looking at the matter in-depth, I realised there was no conflict of interest in the case of Khanna.”

Dutta said that he wrote a letter to the ombudsman at the start of the month to withdraw the complaint of conflict of interest he had made against Khanna. Dutta also added that Khanna’s conflict of interest issue was one of three points he had raised in his initial letter to the ombudsman.

DDCA president and member of the legal committee Sneh Bansal said that Dutta was appointed as standing counsel of the DDCA on July 9. “The legal committee, which includes me forwarded his name to the executive committee which cleared the same following which Dutta was appointed as standing counsel of the DDCA,” Bansal said.

This is not the first time Dutta will be representing the DDCA in courts. Between 2012 and 2014 he was the panel counsel of the DDCA. “I was the one who brought the order for the last AGM when it was held in 2013,” Dutta said.

Incidentally, Dutta an advocate in the high court represented Bansal in the courts when he was challenging his suspension as DDCA president.