HC asks media houses to file affidavits on Mamata’s comment

PTI8_16_2012_000081A_Kand.jpg.crop_display.jpg

Taking up a plea for contempt proceedings against West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly making derogatory remarks about judiciary, the Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed two newspapers and two channels to file affidavits on the authenticity of their reports on her speech.

On the plea by senior counsel Bikash Bhattacharya, who was the Mayor of Kolkata and a CPI(M) leader, a division bench comprising justices K.J. Sengupta and A.K. Mondal directed two national English dailies and two vernacular news channels to file affidavits within three weeks on the authenticity of their reports on a speech made by Banerjee on August 14.

The issue of whether any contempt proceeding would be initiated against the chief minister would come up after examination of the affidavits by the court, lawyers said.

The matter would come up for hearing again after four weeks. Bhattacharya made the oral plea before the bench praying for suo motu contempt proceedings against Banerjee, stating that the chief minister had during a seminar in the Assembly on Tuesday allegedly made derogatory remarks about judiciary.

He also submitted two CDs containing the recordings of television reports and also copies of the two newspapers before the court and sought suo motu action against Banerjee.

In the morning, a section of lawyers led by counsel Subrata Mukhopadhyay had moved the court of chief justice J.N. Patel and Justice Joymalyo Bagchi seeking suo motu contempt proceedings against the chief minister.

The bench refused to take up the matter suo motu and said that he could file a contempt petition before the court and the matter would be heard accordingly.

The Chief Justice's bench had observed that the chief minister had expressed her personal opinion and the judiciary was not disturbed at any such alleged comments.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/181273" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-f3ce96210bf85f80e6631c05807afba8" value="form-f3ce96210bf85f80e6631c05807afba8" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80053299" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.