Kolkata, May 1 In an unprecedented development in the history of the Calcutta High Court, its Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Thursday announced that the division bench headed by him will no longer hear public interest litigations filed in the court.
However, it has also been announced that the division bench headed by the Chief Justice will continue hearing the public interest litigations which are already being heard by it.
The new public interest litigations that will be filed at the Calcutta High Court in future will now be heard by the division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das.
Legal circles feel that it is always the prerogative of the Chief Justice of any high court to decide which case or which subject will be allotted to which bench. However, veteran legal practitioners contend that, by tradition, public interest litigation has always been heard at the Calcutta High Court by the division bench headed by the Chief Justice.
“Only when the Chief Justice is on leave, then the public interest litigations are heard by any alternative division bench. However, since this is a matter of prerogative of the Chief Justice, nothing more can be said on the decision," a senior advocate of the Calcutta High Court said.
On Thursday, it was also announced that besides the public interest litigations, the bench headed by the Chief Justice will also not hear the matter related to inaction or hyper-action by the police. That subject has been referred to the bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra.
Justice Sivagnanam is scheduled to retire in September this year. Enrolling in the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu on September 10, 1986, he was elevated as an additional judge of the Madras High Court on March 31, 2009, and appointed as a permanent judge on March 29, 2011. He was transferred to the Calcutta High Court in October 2021 and became the Chief Justice in May 2023.
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