Kolkata, April 23 A division bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Wednesday, allowed the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari to visit pockets in Murshidabad district which was on the boil earlier this month over communal violence as protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act turned violent.
However, Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury of the Calcutta High Court’s division bench imposed certain conditions on Adhikari’s visit to the troubled pockets in Murshidabad.
The first condition is that no more than two persons will be allowed to accompany the Leader of the Opposition there. Secondly, he would not be able to participate in any rally or gathering during his visit. Finally, he would not use any provocative statements during his visit.
Adhikari approached the Calcutta High Court bench after the district police denied him permission to visit Murshidabad. The counsel of Adhikari argued that the denial of permission was only for his client when other political leaders were allowed to make similar trips to the strife-hit district.
Initially, Adhikari approached Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh for permission to visit Murshidabad. However, Justice Ghosh refused to entertain the case on the grounds that the main case on the Murshidabad strike was pending at the division bench of Justice Sen and Justice Basu Chowdhury.
Thereafter, LoP Adhikari approached the division bench for permission, which was granted on Wednesday.
Incidentally, this was the same division bench that had on April 12 ordered the deployment of central armed police forces (CAPF) personnel at Murshidabad. In that order, the division bench observed that the measures adopted by the West Bengal government to control communal unrest in Murshidabad, which broke out on April 8, were not adequate.
The division bench also observed that had the CAPF deployment been earlier, the situation would not have been so “grave” and “volatile”.
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