Will Keep Fighting Corruption, Says Justice Gangopadhyay After SC Stays His Order In A Late Night Hearing
|The chain of events that began in the morning yesterday with the Supreme Court perusing the report of the Registrar General of the Calcutta High Court on Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay’s interview to ABP Ananda and directing transfer of the case before him to any other judge of the Court, culminated with a media byte post-midnight by Justice Gangopadhyay saying that he will keep fighting corruption.
“Having considered the transcript, we direct that the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court at Calcutta shall reassign the pending proceedings in the case to some other Judge of the Calcutta High Court. The Judge to whom the proceedings are reassigned by the Acting Chief Justice would be at liberty to take up all applications which may be moved in that regard”, a bench comprising CJI D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha had ordered on Friday morning.
Pursuant to this, in a suo motu proceeding, Justice Gangopadhyay sought the report and the transcript made by the Translation Department in original, which were perused by the Supreme Court. Further, the Judge said in his order that he will wait for the same till 12:15 at midnight in his chamber.
“For the sake of transparency, I direct the Secretary General of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India to produce before me the report and the official translation of the interview given by me in media and the affidavit of the Registrar General of this Court in original, forthwith by 12 midnight today. This is required for the sake of transparency. I will be waiting in my chamber till 12:15 in the midnight to get the said two sets in original which were placed before the Hon’ble Judges of the Supreme Court today. Having said that in his order he directed the Registrar General of the High Court to communicate with the Registrar General of the Supreme Court to, “as this has become now records of the court as the adjudication thereof is over”, Justice Ganghopadhyay said in his order.
Subsequently, in a special late-evening sitting, a bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice Hima Kohli stayed the order passed by Justice Gangopadhyay in the suo moto proceeding.
“…The said order is passed by the Court on its own motion. In that background, we have also taken note of the orders dated April 24, 2023 and April 28, 2023 passed by a bench of this Court headed by the Hon’ble the Chief Justice of India. In that light, on hearing the learned Solicitor General of India, in the matter of present nature, it has been rightly pointed out by him that an order of the present nature ought not to have been passed in a judicial proceeding, more so keeping in view the judicial discipline expected to be maintained”, the bench said in the order.
In response to the order of the bench, while leaving his office at night, as per PTI, Justice Gangopadhyay said, “A discipline has to be maintained and because the Supreme Court is the highest court of the country, as a high court, we must abide by its directions”. "As long as I am a judge, I will keep fighting against corruption", his statement read in another report.
The SLP before the Court relates to the primary teachers' recruitment scam case and impugns the order passed by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court.