Supreme Court stays Calcutta HC order against Mamata in Narada case
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court stayed an order by Calcutta High Court which declined to record affidavits filed by Trinamool Congress leaders in connection with the Narada case. The Supreme Court order comes after the case was assigned to Justice Vineet Saran recently. He had said that this is a new case and he hasn't read the file yet.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bengal government and Law Minister Moloy Ghatak have been asked to file fresh pleas requesting the Calcutta High Court to reconsider taking the affidavits on record.
The High Court has also been asked to make a decision on fresh pleas and accepting the new affidavits. The court is set to meet on June 29.
On June 9, a five-judge bench of Calcutta High Court had refused to accept the affidavits filed by Mamata Banerjee and Moloy Ghatak. The court had said that the concerned parties took a risk by not filing affidavits at the right time and we cannot now allow them to file it at "their own whims and fancies".
Representatives of the party, senior advocates Rakesh Dwivedi and Vikas Singh said that the affidavits have to be on record because they deal with the roles of concerned persons. It explains Banerjee and Ghatak's version of the events of May 17.
The CBI arrested three members of Trinamool Congress - Transport and Housing Minister Firhad Hakim, Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Subrata Mukherjee, MLA Madan Mitra, ex-party leader Sovan Chatterjee on May 17 in connection with the Narada case. Mamata Banerjee camped outside the CBI office for six hours. TMC supporters protested by throwing stones and tried to break the barricade.
The Narada case involves a sting operation conducted by a journalist in 2014. He posed as a businessman planning to make investments in the states and gave bribes to seven Trinamool MPs, four ministers, one MLA, and a police officer. All transactions were recorded and released to the public just before the Assembly Election of 2016.
The CBI asked for permission to transfer the case out of Bengal citing the violence, and called the protests "mobocracy". The affidavits in question were intended to counter the transfer request.
On June 21, the CM moved to the Supreme Court against the High Court's decision. The case went to Justice Vineet Saran after Justice Aniruddha Bose opted out of it. Last week, Justice Indira Banerjee also opted out of another case concerning post-poll violence in Bengal.