Calcutta High Court Judge Abhijit Ganguly resigns; Announces his plan of joining BJP

Hours after Justice Abhijit Ganguly resigned as a judge in the Calcutta High Court on today morning announced that he is going to join the Bharatiya Janata Party probably on March 7, in the afternoon. He had said on Sunday that he will leave the judiciary on Tuesday and is looking forward to enter into the realm of politics although he did not mention which party he is going to join or whether he is going to fight the Lok Sabha elections.

PTI reports that he has sent his resignation letter to the President Draupadi Murmu, with copies to CJI DY Chandrachud and the Chief Justice of the Calcutta HC TS Sivagnanam earlier today. On Monday, which counted as the last working day of Ganguly, several lawmakers and common people gathered in the room number 17 to bid farewell to Ganguly and an emotional episode was followed.

Before his final announcement of joining BJP, Ganguly said that he could be joining any of the parties BJP, Left or congress but deliberately excluded TMC from the list. Later in defense of his decision of joining BJP he said that TMC has turned West Bengal into an empire of the thieves referring to the term “Chourjyasamrajya”; the Left on the other hand doesn’t believe in God and religion as opposed to his beliefs; and he considers the Congress as a zamindari of one family. He even praised the Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling him a “very hard-working man” while speaking to the reporters.

Ganguly told ANI earlier today that for the last two or more years he has been dealing with some matters, especially education matters, regarding which a huge corruption has been discovered and a large number of important persons in the education sector of the West Bengal government are now languishing in jail, under trial.

There has been a prediction that Ganguly would be contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Bengal’s Tamluk constituency which has been one of the hotbeds in recent elections; the Mamata Bannerjee led TMC has been holding it since 2009.

Reaction of TMC member

After Ganguly declared that he is going to resign on Tuesday and based on the bytes that he gave while speaking to the media Kalyan Bannerjee, senior advocate and TMC MP told the bench of judges hearing school recruitment scam-related issues on Monday that Justice Ganguly was a “political person” and the orders he had passed had a political motive. He claimed, “The orders (passed by Justice Ganguly) should be struck down. The single judge has spoken to the media. He has given this order (in school service commission cases) with a political motive. He used these orders to carve out his political career.”