Calcutta HC refuses to hear Abhishek Banerjee's plea on fast-track basis

Kolkata, May 19 (IANS) A division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday refused to hear a plea filed by Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on a fast-track basis.

The plea challenges the order of a single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha allowing central agencies to question Banerjee in a matter related to the school-recruitment case in West Bengal.

The division bench comprising Justices Subrata Talukdar and Supratim Bhattacharya refused to hear the matter stating that there were some other pending hearings scheduled for Friday.

The matter has now been referred back to the Calcutta High Court's Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam for him to decide.

On Thursday evening, Banerjee's counsel had approached the Chief Justice with an appeal for the fast-track hearing.

The Calcutta High Court will be going for a summer vacation from May 22 and it is closed this coming weekend.

However, Justice Talukdar at the same time verbally advised Banerjee's counsel to approach the vacation bench if they deemed it necessary.

On Thursday, Justice Sinha's bench while allowing the central agencies to question Banerjee and expelled youth Trinamool Congress leader Kuntal Ghosh in the case, also imposed a penalty of Rs 25 lakhs each on the two.

Banerjee's name surfaced after Ghosh wrote letters to a local police station as well as to the judge of a lower court accusing central agencies of putting pressure on him to name the Trinamool general secretary in the alleged scam.

Initially, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay had empowered the central agencies for questioning Banerjee. But he approached the Supreme Court in the matter.

Following the order of the Supreme Court, two related cases in the matter were transferred to the bench of Justice Sinha.