THE news item was simple: A judge of the Calcutta High Court has recused himself from hearing a petition placed before the Court by Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and the chief minister of West Bengal. The petition challenged the election of TMC turncoat and now BJP leader Subhendu Adhikari from the Nandi gram assembly seat at the recent polls that the TMC massively won. The vanquished in that constituency was Mamata herself.
Considering the recent recusals by two Supreme Court judges, Justices Indira Banerjee and Aniruddha Bose, from cases related to Bengal, this would not have raised eyebrows. However, Justice Kausik Chanda’s recusal has, strangely, come with the imposition of a cost of Rs 5 lakh, and has also come after protests from several TMC leaders who have pointed out that the judge, in the past, had been actively and closely associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party whose candidate’s election was being challenged in the petition. MPs Derek O’Brien and Mohua Moitra had tweeted pictures showing Chanda, then not a judge, but a lawyer associated with the BJP, attending party meetings alongside Dilip Ghosh, who is now the party’s president in West Bengal.
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