Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 2: Asking the Mamata Banerjee government to file FIR in each case of the recent post-poll violence in West Bengal, the Calcutta High Court in one of its strongest censure of the Trinamool Congress government on Saturday said the state government was in a “denial mode” about the violence that erupted in May following the state elections.
Taking up an interim report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on complaints of attacks on the government’s political adversaries after the March-April elections, the high court said that there was enough evidence to establish that post-poll violence had indeed taken place.
In the state Assembly which was beginning its first session on Friday after Banerjee took over as the chief minister for the third term, chaos prevailed with continuous slogan-shouting by the opposition BJP members forcing the governor Jagdeep Dhankhar to cut short his inaugural address and leave the Assembly precincts within 10 minutes.
The BJP said it was forced to protest the governor’s address because the government-prepared speech had no reference to the post-poll violence in the state.
“The state is in denial mode,” a special five-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court headed by Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal said, adding that the administration had been caught “on the wrong foot”.
Acknowledging incidents of sexual violence on women and minors, the court sent a show-cause notice to a senior police officer for failing to assist an NHRC team that came to probe the allegations.
“The state must respond to queries by NHRC,” the court said, asking the Chief Secretary to ensure that sensitive documents and correspondence from state police units were preserved.
It also ordered a second autopsy at the army hospital in Kolkata of one of the men who was allegedly killed in post-poll violence and said the state must make all arrangements for medical treatment of those injured in the attacks.
Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said he “welcomed” the ruling but demanded the investigation be transferred to an “independent” agency.
“(Investigation) charge should be given to (an) independent agency. FIR must be filed outside Bengal and the probe should continue. Things will be clear then. The interim report proves the affidavit (post-poll violence) filed by Bengal Chief Minister is false,” he said.
For two months now, the BJP has alleged that the state had gone soft on curbing post-poll violence that especially targeted its supporters and leaders following their defeat in the polls against the ruling Trinamool Congress.
The Banerjee government, however, had claimed that the post-poll violence reports had been “greatly exaggerated” with fake videos and images, and most of the incidents of violence that took place around the May 2 counting day happened when the state police were under the control of the Election Commission of India conducting the Assembly elections.
The issue of post-poll violence has also gone to the Supreme Court with some families of the victims who are demanding a CBI probe and a plea seeking direction to the centre to impose President’s Rule in the state.
A pandemonium in the state Assembly was in any way expected because both the ruling TMC and the opposition BJP were prepared for slogan-shouting depending on the action of the governor with whom the chief minister is at loggerheads for some time over various issues.
The TMC sources said the party was apprehensive that the governor might deviate from his written address and raise post-poll violence and other pro-BJP issues at the prompting of the opposition. But even before that could happen, the BJP raised the anti-government slogans and held up placards disrupting the House proceedings. The party sources said this was part of their strategy – to ensure the governor would not have to read his whole speech which would be “praising” the state government’s “performance.”
The governor and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have been at loggerheads for most of the three years he has been in the post. They have fought over several issues, including (most recently) fake Covid vaccination camps, a 1996 hawala scam, and violence after the Trinamool’s election win.
Suvendu Adhikari, Leader of the Opposition, said they were forced to protest as there was no mention of post-poll violence in the copy circulated among MLAs.
The governor is not bound to read everything the government writes in their draft.
“If they write anything in the address which is unconstitutional… will I read that? Every address has to conform to constitutional parameters and boundaries,” Dhankhar had said on Monday.
Yesterday the Trinamool claimed links between the organisers of fake vaccine camps in Kolkata – which the BJP have, in turn, linked to the ruling party, and Dhankhar.
On Monday Mamata Banerjee had accused Dhankhar of being a “corrupt man”; “This governor’s name was in the Jain Hawala case. But they have cleared it from the court. There is a PIL. But the PIL is pending. What you want to know? He is a corrupt man, I am sorry to say,” she said.
For his part, in May, moments after Banerjee took oath for the third time, the governor chose to raise the violence and reminded her of her duty to control law and order in the state.
Meanwhile, the TMC urged the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove Tushar Mehta as Solicitor General of India over his alleged meeting with Suvendu Adhikari being investigated by the CBI in corruption cases.
Tushar Mehta, who represents the CBI in some of the cases, emphatically denied meeting with Adhikari, saying he “dropped in unannounced” on Thursday to his residence but left without meeting him after he showed his inability to meet him.
In a letter to Modi, MPs of the Trinamool Congress alleged “conflict of interest” in Mehta’s meeting with Adhikari and said he should be “immediately removed” as the central government’s top lawyer.
The Trinamool said Adhikari is an accused in various criminal cases being investigated by the CBI, which is represented by the Solicitor General in many of these cases. Mehta meeting such a person raises “some serious questions about the integrity of the post”, said the letter signed by three MPs, Derek O’Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Mahua Moitra.