The Centre and the Bengal government have taken conflicting positions in the Supreme Court on the January 24 order for a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in medical college admissions in the state, delivered by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court, and a stay on the probe issued by a division bench.
While the state assailed Justice Gangopadhyay’s order on the ground that the petitioner had not pleaded for a CBI inquiry, the Centre questioned the division bench’s decision to issue a stay without a formal appeal being filed and sought an order to shift the proceedings out of the state.
According to the Centre, some “supervening circumstances may have vitiated judicial process” at the high court, which witnessed an unusual situation after Justice Gangopadhyay issued a counter-order following the stay ordered by the division bench.
“It is clear that some supervening circumstances may have vitiated the process before the Hon’ble High Court in its entirety. This portrays a reasonable likelihood of the streams of justice being polluted not only to the eyes of common man, but also to men of law,” solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Union government, submitted before a five-judge constitution bench that is hearing the matter.
He added: “In the present circumstances, if the entire proceedings are not shifted out of the state of West Bengal and heard de-novo, a serious damage would result in perception of justice, especially the applicability of ‘rule of law’.”
On Monday, the five-judge bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justice B.R. Gavai, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Aniruddha Bose transferred to itself the petitions and appeals pending in the high court related to the medical college admissions in the reserved category.
Mehta, in his written submission, said: “There cannot be any doubt that incidents and the allegations in the present case and others have affected the administration of justice and brought the entire institution and its functioning under question.”
At the same time, Mehta said, the hearing of the appeal (against the order for a CBI probe) by the division bench without a memorandum and the impugned order and without any seeming urgency cannot be considered correct.
The Centre further referred to Section 82 of the CrPC, according to which “every appeal shall be made in the form of a petition in writing presented by the appellant or his pleader, and every such petition shall (unless the Court to which it is presented otherwise directs) be accompanied by a copy of the judgment or order appealed against.”
“It is therefore submitted that it would be appropriate, considering that there was no grave irreversible urgency in the matter, that actual memorandum of appeal was filed before the order of the Ld. Single Judge... was stayed,” Mehta said.
However, the Bengal government in its special leave petition before the apex court has assailed Justice Gangopadhyay’s order for a CBI probe on the ground that the petitioner, Ishita Soren, had made no such request.
“The Ld. Single Judge has erroneously directed the CBI to take over the documents from the state police and register an FIR, solely considering the fact that the state police had failed to arrest an accused in a completely different investigation, which was not even the subject matter of the petition before it, thus the said order was clearly misconceived and baseless,” said the appeal filed through the state’s standing counsel, Astha Sharma.
Sharma said the insinuations made by the single judge were aimed at bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
Soren had alleged that candidates had enrolled in the MBBS course in the ST category based on fake caste certificates.
“Neither was a CBI investigation prayed for by the writ petitioner, nor was there any material on record placed by the writ petitioner to show that the state police could not conduct the said investigation or even otherwise cogent material on record to indicate that an investigation by the state police would not yield effective results,” the state complained.
The state added: “It is most respectfully submitted that the present is not the first case, wherein the self-same Ld. Single judge has transferred the investigation from the State Police to the CBI, without following the settled principles of Law. In fact, from 2022 till date vide impugned orders, investigation by CBI and then by... the ED has been directed by the said Ld. Single Judge.”