: Legal crisis erupts in Bengal over slander campaign against HC judge #IndiaNEWS #India Kolkata: Though not many yet there had been an instance during the previous Left Front government in West Bengal

Legal crisis erupts in Bengal over slander campaign against HC judge #IndiaNEWS #India
Kolkata: Though not many yet there had been an instance during the previous Left Front government in West Bengal where an important leader of the ruling party got engaged in a spat with a judge of Calcutta High Court.
In 2003, late Justice Amitava Lala of Calcutta High Court, made an observation within the court that rallies on the streets of Kolkata should be banned on working days. His observation was prompted by a development where his vehicle destined for the court got stuck on the roads because of a rally of the ruling party.
The spat started there only as irked by Justice Lalas observation, veteran CPI(M) leader and the Left Front chairman Biman Bose in a public meeting raised the slogan Bicharpoti Lala, Bangla Chhere Pala (Justice Lala, you better flee from Bengal).
As controversies started and criticism started flowing in from different sections of the society, both Bose and party leadership decided to take a step ahead in bringing an end to the snowballing hullabaloo. Soon Bose personally visited the court of Justice Lala and apologised for coining such a slogan.
It is perceived by many Left Front veterans that the approach of ending the controversy through the tendering of apology was the brainchild of nonagenarian Indian Marxist and longest serving West Bengal chief minister, Late Jyoti Basu.
However, this time throughout the entire past week, the slanderous moves concerning Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of Calcutta High Court have crossed all limits where not a verdict but a particular representative of the judiciary has become the target of the nastiest ever political attack both within the high court premises as well as outside.
The fiasco started from January 9 morning after slanderous posters were seen pasted on the walls of Justice Manthas residence and adjacent areas where the latter was slammed for being biased towards the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari.
In the posters he was also slammed for his recent verdict removing the protection of shield against any cohesive action, including arrest, by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Maneka Gambhir, sister-in-law of Trinamool Congresss national general secretary and party Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee.
From the same day a section of the lawyers of the Calcutta High Court started boycotting Justice Manthas bench and also started resisting their fellow professionals in entering his court. The fiasco continued on Monday and Tuesday, until on Wednesday morning Justice Mantha issued a contempt of court rule and also filed a suo motu petition in the matter.
Although the resistance from entering his court stopped, a large section of the public prosecutors and government pleaders continued boycotting his bench thus affecting the progress of the cases where the state government is a party.

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