Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay vs. Justice Soumen Sen: Supreme Court transfers Caste Certificate scam case from Calcutta High Court to itself

In view of the rift that emerged between two sitting judges of the Calcutta High Court over the case relating to caste certificate scam, the Supreme Court on Monday transferred all proceedings concerning the case from the High Court to the top court [In Re: Orders of Calcutta High Court dated 24.01.2024 and 25.01.2024 and Ancillary Issues]..A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, Surya Kant, and Aniruddha Bose passed the order in a suo motu case..The suo motu case was initiated after Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court passed a bizarre order to "ignore" a stay order passed by a division bench headed by Justice Soumen Sen..The Supreme Court, today, refrained from making any comments on the apparent clash between Justices Gangopadhyay and Sen, observing that any such comment would affect the dignity of the High Court's proceedings. "Casting aspersions on single judge or division bench would not be proper. Anything we say will have effect on impinging the dignity of the high court. we will handle it in some way," CJI Chandrachud said. However, the top court informed that the case which triggered the controversial events at the High Court would hereafter be dealt with by the Supreme Court. "We will transfer the proceedings in the writ petition and the letters patent appeal to the Supreme Court. We will list it after a while and deal with it. ... The plea under Article 226 and letters patent appeal to be transferred to this court. Let pleadings be completed meanwhile," the top court said. .Meanwhile, various senior counsel briefly raised incidental concerns before the Supreme Court bench today. "Justice Gangopadhyay is continuing to take such matters.. He will continue doing the same thing," submitted Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal who appeared on behalf of State of West Bengal.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta hinted that there were some "shocking facts" at play. Senior Advocate KTS Tulsi appeared for students belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The Supreme Court today, however, decided not to comment on the tussle between the High Court judges and confined the hearing to only transferring the High Court proceedings to itself. "There is a Chief justice of the High Court who is allocating cases. Let us not arrogate his powers," the CJI added. .The matter is rooted in a petition filed before the High Court alleging the issuance of fake caste certificates in West Bengal.It first came up before Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay who ordered a CBI inquiry even though no such prayer was made in the petition.The single-judge's order was stayed the same day by a division bench of Justices Soumen Sen and Uday Kumar.Regardless, Justice Gangopadhyay proceeded to allow the handover of the case papers to the CBI the same afternoon, while recording that there was no intimation by the State counsel of the division bench's stay orderFurther, the very next day (January 25), Justice Gangopadhyay passed another order, indicating that the division bench judgment ought to be ignored. The said order also contained several diatribes against Justice Sen who was accused of being an "interested party."He alleged in the order that Justice Sen had called another Calcutta High Court judge, Justice Amrita Sinha, to his chambers recently, and told her that Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee has a political future that should not be disturbed by means of judicial orders.Justice Sen also passed another order on January 25 criticising the order passed by Justice Gangopadhyay and ordered the CBI to hand the case papers back to the State.The Supreme Court took cognisance of the rift and, on Saturday (January 27), stayed the proceedings before both the single-judge and division bench of the High Court.The Court also stayed the order for CBI probe passed by single-judge Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay..On a related note, Justice Gangopadhyay is no stranger to controversy.The Supreme Court had in April last year taken strong exception to him giving an interview to a news channel regarding Banerjee even as a case concerning the politician was being heard by the judge.Soon after, in a special late evening hearing, the top court had to stay an order passed by Justice Gangopadhyay directing its Secretary-General to produce its report in connection with the said interview.