Mamata challenges Bhabanipur election in high court; BJP calls it futile attempt

TRinamool u.s. Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee filed a petition at the Calcutta heights margaret court on tues thought-provoking her defeat to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Suvendu Adhikari at Kolkata’s Bhabanipur assembly seat in the April 29 assembly polls, the party said.“Ask Kalyan Banerjee,” the former chief minister said while leaving the court building with her aides, referring to Lok Sabha member and senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee who will represent her.“Mamata Banerjee came to court to challenge the entire Bhabanipur election process. There is reasonable evidence of bias in the process. For example, the chief electoral officer (Manoj Kumar Agarwal) became the chief secretary after the elections. Whoever helped was rewarded by Suvendu Adhikari,” Kalyan Banerjee said.Adhikari defeated Mamata Banerjee by 15,105 votes at her traditional seat, south Kolkata’s Bhabanipur, in the second of the two-phase state polls, and became CM after the results were announced on May 4.Mamata Banerjee refused to resign as CM and alleged that the polls were rigged after deleting a few million names during the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.This was the second time Mamata Banerjee was defeated by Adhikari in five years. She challenged him at his traditional Nandigram seat in 2021 and lost by 1,956 votes.Bengal parliamentary affairs minister Shankar Ghosh took a swipe at Mamata Banerjee for challenging the Bhabanipur results.“She challenged the 2021 Nandigram results as well and moved court. Now that her party is facing oblivion, let her make another futile attempt,” he said.Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram petition is still pending at the high court.In a parallel development, the high court on Tuesday deferred its hearing on a TMC petition challenging assembly speaker Rathindra Nath Bose’s decision to recognise a group of 58 rebel TMC MLAs as the opposition with expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the opposition (LoP).On June 3, Bose recognised 58 rebel TMC legislators as the principal opposition group in the 294-member House.On June 1, Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha were expelled from the TMC after Adhikari said their written complaint had led to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe into the alleged signature forgery.Also Read:TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee grilled for 6 hours by CID in ‘provocative speech’ caseThe development came 29 days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 207 seats against the TMC’s 80.The two legislators alleged that signatures of several TMC MLAs were forged on a May 19 resolution nominating Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the assembly’s leader of opposition (LoP). The speaker subsequently sought a police investigation into the matter. Abhishek Banerjee is considered a key suspect because he forwarded the resolution to the speaker. He was questioned by the CID for 5.5 hours on June 11 and 8.5 hours on June 14.On June 11, the single bench of Justice Krishna Rao heard the TMC’s petition and questioned the speaker’s decision to recognise an expelled party member as the LoP without the party’s consent. “The person appointed as the LoP doesn’t belong to any political party. He was expelled,” the bench observed.Seeking an interim stay on the speaker’s order, Kalyan Banerjee argued before the court that the speaker’s decision violated the 10th Schedule of the Constitution.In response, the state’s additional advocate general (AAG) Bilwadal Bhattacharya requested time to file an affidavit. The matter came up for hearing on Tuesday but the hearing was deferred till Wednesday.In another development on Tuesday, the speaker called an all-party meeting at the assembly to decide the formalities for the upcoming budget session starting June 18.Mamata Banerjee loyalist Kunal Ghosh, the MLA from Kolkata’s Beliaghata seat, alleged that neither he nor any official TMC MLA was invited to the meeting.“I did not receive any invitation. Our senior most MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, who was supposed to be the LoP as per our recommendation, was not invited either. Instead, an expelled party member was invited as the LoP. The speaker is not following Constitutional norms,” he said.The speaker did not speak to the media.Shankar Ghosh said the meeting was held according to the rules. “All parties were invited as per rules,” he said.