The applications moved by Trinamul Congress national general-secretary Abhishek Banerjee and the party’s leader — an arrested accused in the primary teacher recruitment “scam” case — Kuntal Ghosh were heard on Monday by Justice Amrita Sinha of Calcutta HighCourt.

The hearing will continue on Tuesday when Dhiraj Trivedi, the lawyer appearing for the Enforcement Directorate (ED), would counter the argument of the counsel appearing for Ghosh.

Moving the application on behalf of Abhishek, his counsel Kishore Dutta had claimed that the order of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay asking the central agencies to interrogate his client in the “scam” case, should be recalled.

His argument was mainly based on three points. First, Justice Gangopadhyay was “biased”, and he made some adverse comments on his client in a television interview, while the school recruitment “scam” case was lying pending for disposal before him. Second, although there were no prayers from the ED or the CBI, the judge on his own issued the order for interrogation. Third, his client was not heard by the judge before passing the order.

ED counsel Trivedi, in his submission on Monday, countered Dutta’s argument and claimed that it was not right that the central agency had not approached the court seeking permission to interrogate Abhishek.

Trivedi also claimed that for the sake of a clean investigation, the judge had the right to order the interrogation of any person.

Hearing Abhishek before passing the order was not necessary.