Supreme Court advocates seek “expeditious action” on SC report naming J. Ganguly; Demand report to be made public

As per this report in the Times of India, several Supreme Court heavyweights have now asked for “expeditious action” to be taken on the report prepared by the Supreme Court committee established to look into allegations of sexual harassment. The allegations were raised in this blog post, wherein the intern alleged that a recently retired judge of the Supreme Court had sexually harassed her..On November 12, 2013 Chief Justice Sathasivam, taking cognizance of this allegation, constituted a 3-judge committee to examine the allegations and submit a report. The report, prepared after hearing the intern as well as the judge concerned, was reportedly submitted to the Chief Justice last week. The committee had also disclosed the fact that the judge against whom the allegations were made was Justice AK Ganguly..As per the ToI piece, Additional Solicitor General, Indira Jaisingh has now sought the findings of the report to be made public. She also said that if a cognizable offence has been made out, then the Chief Justice must submit the report to the police “for necessary action”. A similar school of thought appears to have been followed by Senior Advocate Kamini Jaiswal..As for Justice Ganguly who is currently heading the West Bengal Human Rights Commission, Senior Advocate Raju Ramachandran says that the judge ought to resign if a “prima facie” case is made out against him..Meanwhile, Professor Ishwara Bhatt is also facing difficult questions of his own given the fact that he is the Vice Chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata (NUJS) and that the intern was a student of NUJS at the time of the alleged incident. Furthermore, as per this Outlook article, the internship was arranged after Justice Ganguly requested Prof. Bhatt for research assistants from NUJS..Justice Ganguly is currently a member of the NUJS General Council, and also offers lectures on constitutional litigation every Saturday. According to Professor Bhatt, any decision in this regard will be taken at a meeting of the NUJS General Council to be held next month. Students at NUJS though, as per the Telegraph piece referred earlier, are planning to hold an agitation unless “prompt action” was taken against Justice Ganguly. The nature of this “prompt action” could not be clarified..The Outlook article also states that faculty at NUJS are afraid to speak out against Justice Ganguly because of “the nature of the relationship he shares with the institution”. As per an unnamed faculty member,.“No one from the university is willing to speak out against the judge because of the close equation that he shares with the vice-chancellor. They are friends and he had appointed the V-C”