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TMC's Ritabrata Banerjee to remain Leader of Opposition in Bengal Assembly for now: Calcutta HC
Ritabrata Banerjee, who claims the support of over 60 of TMC's 80 MLAs, welcomed the division bench's decision.
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A division bench of the Calcutta high court on Tuesday declined to stay Bengal assembly speaker's decision to recognise rebel TMC legislator Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the assembly (LoP) and sent the case back to a single-judge bench.
justices Shampa Sarkar and Ajay Kumar Gupta decided that justice Krishna Rao, which had initially heard veteran Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay's petition against the speaker’s decision, has to resolve the matter in two months.
Veteran legislator Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay had approached the division bench to seek relief after justice Rao didn’t pass any interim order against the speaker’s decision.
Ritabrata Banerjee, who claims the support of over 60 of TMC's 80 MLAs, welcomed the division bench's decision. He referred to the TMC's Mamata Banerjee faction as the "Kalighat Trinamool" since the former chief minister lives in south Kolkata's Kalighat.
"The order exposes the current status of the Kalighat Trinamool which now basically exists on Facebook," Ritabrata said.
Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay declined to comment. "We cannot make any statement on a court order. Let us see what happens at the single bench in two months," he said.
On June 17, justice Krishna Rao heard Chattopadhyay's petition challenging speaker Rathindra Nath Bose's June 3 decision to recognise Ritabrata, who the party expelled on June 1, as the LoP in the House.
At the time, justice Rao questioned the speaker’s decision to recognise an expelled TMC member as LoP although the party officially recommended Chattopadhyay for the post but did not pass any order.
The Bharatiya Janata Party wrested 207 of Bengal's 294 seats against the TMC's 80 in the recent elections. On June 3, the speaker recognised 58 rebel TMC legislators as the principal opposition party in the assembly and named Ritabrata and Sandipan Saha as the leader and deputy leader of the Opposition, respectively.
Banerjee and Saha were both expelled on June 1 after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said that a written complaint by them led to the CID probe into the forgery of signatures of some TMC MLAs in a May 19 resolution nominating Chattopadhyay as the LoP.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee is being investigated by the police in the case because he sent a copy of the resolution to the speaker. The CID has already questioned him.
During the June 17 hearing, the state's additional advocate general Bilwadal Bhattacharya, who represented the speaker, argued that Ritabrata Banerjee's expulsion was an internal matter of the TMC and was of no consequence to the assembly.
Representing Chattopadhyay, TMC MP and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee argued that a speaker cannot choose an LoP by ignoring the party the incumbent represents.
