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BJP to move Supreme Court for permission to hold rath yatra in Bengal
A division bench of the Calcutta high court on Friday stayed the order by its single-judge bench a day before granting conditional approval to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rath yatra, disrupting its plans to flag off the first rally from the temple town of Tarapith in Birbhum district today.
The BJP has decided to move a vacation bench of the Supreme Court challenging the Calcutta high court order that stayed permission for its rath yatra in West Bengal, reports news agency ANI.
A division bench of the Calcutta high court on Friday stayed the order by its single-judge bench a day before granting conditional approval to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rath yatra, disrupting its plans to flag off the first rally from the temple town of Tarapith in Birbhum district today.
Appearing on behalf of West Bengal Police, Abhishek Singhvi, Congress MP and senior advocate, argued that the single-judge bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty did not study intelligence reports submitted in a sealed envelope before passing its order.
He added that the reports are detailed ones in which police have mapped out the route the yatra is supposed to take and undertaken a thorough risk analysis.
On Friday, the division bench of Chief Justice Debasish Kar Gupta and Justice Shampa Sarkar observed that the single-judge bench has to go through the reports to pronounce an objective order.
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“The division bench has not disallowed the yatra. Our legal battle will continue. So will our agitation and programmes in different districts,” BJP state president Dilip Ghosh had said.
“The state government wants to block the programme by hook or by crook. Therefore, we have called our rally a ‘Save Democracy’ rally,” added BJP Bengal unit vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar.
“There is distinct apprehension of communal disharmony being triggered in Bengal over the yatra. That’s why the government is fighting it out in the courts,” said Sudip Bandyopadhyay, leader of the Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha.
The single-judge bench of Calcutta high court had criticised the Mamata Banerjee government for rejecting the BJP event “in a whimsical and unreasonable manner”. The court had allowed the yatras subject to a few conditions.
