Justice Abhijit Ganguly, who stepped down from the judge’s seat on Tuesday, predicted the Trinamul Congress was a few arrests away from collapsing, soon after the former judge took the leap from the Calcutta High Court chambers to the world of politics.
“Trinamul Congress means corruption, corruption means Trinamul Congress,” Ganguly said, while announcing his decision to join the BJP within hours of submitting his resignation to the chief justice of the Calcutta High Court, TS Sivagnanam. His resignation has also been sent to the President Draupadi Murmu and the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud.
“Will they (Trinamul) survive 2024? Will the party remain till 2026? Just two or three arrests and the party will vanish. It has already started imploding,” Ganguly said, equating ruling Trinamul of today with the CPM in 2009. “Trinamul is not a political party. It is a jatra (folk theatre) party.”
Addressing a press conference later, Ganguly appeared to be ready to take on his opponents politically, discarding the weapons and armour of constitutional law. Ganguly repeatedly said that in his judgements he had shown how corruption cases were to be dealt with.
“It (Trinamul) is made of completely corrupt people. Some of them suddenly have an awakening of their conscience,” said Ganguly. “There are some good people, who cannot find the exit route. I spoke with one of them last night. He said he was not aware about the extent of corruption. He told me about a sitting minister’s indulgences.”
Ganguly cited the BJP’s slogan of "zero tolerance to corruption" as the main reason behind his decision to join the Narendra Modi-led party.
While he dismissed Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee as “just another politician”, about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ganguly said: “Very good man. Very hard working. Trying to do something for our country.”
Ganguly said he was likely to formally join the BJP on Thursday, March 7 and had not yet decided whether he will contest the elections or not.
“I am not planning to contest. BJP will decide that,” he said, though a little later he said he could win from Diamond Harbour by lakhs of votes, indicating a desire to take on the sitting MP and Trinamul’s all-India general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, whom he declined from naming repeatedly.
“They have a taal-patar sipahi, who is addressed as general. I won’t say his name, it is a slang. If I contest from Diamond Harbour I will defeat him by lakhs of votes,” Ganguly said, adding that the Trinamul leaders caught on camera accepting money were victims. “I will show how the goons in Diamond Harbour are to be dealt with.”
There is a possibility that Ganguly could get a nomination for the Tamluk seat, which is held by Trinamul’s Dibyendu Adhikari, younger brother of the leader of Opposition from the BJP, Suvendu.
Ganguly also dismissed the Narada case where a number of Trinamul leaders were caught on camera accepting money from a fictitious company as a “conspiracy.”
Among those politicians whose purported images were caught on camera was Suvendu Adhikari, then a Trinamul MP. The videos of the “sting operation” were released by the BJP just ahead of the 2016 Assembly polls.
“Narada was not even a sting operation. It was a conspiracy to frame some senior leaders. It has to be unearthed first who had hatched the conspiracy. Interrogation in the Alchemist case is the first step towards that,: Ganguly said.
The Enforcement Directorate had last week issued summons to state power minister and Trinamul treasurer Aroop Biswas in the Alchemist chit fund scam.
While Sheikh Shahjahan, the suspended Trinamul strongman from Sandeshkhali was on the run, Abhishek had claimed that judicial protection, courtesy a stay order, stopped the police from arresting him.
“He (Shahjahan) was not arrested because the police did not want to. What does he (Abhishek) understand about judiciary. He should count himself lucky that the court did not take any action against him,” said Ganguly, while welcoming the high court decision to hand over the Sandeshkhali probe to the CBI.
Over the years Ganguly had earned the reputation of being known as the “people’s judge” with his scathing verdicts and frequent run-ins with the Trinamul Congress and the Mamata Banerjee government on corruption cases, especially those involving the recruitment of teachers, in which he had ordered a CBI probe.
“West Bengal has become such a state where no one can secure or even retain a state government job without paying money,” he had observed while giving a verdict in a case in August 2022.
On Sunday, Ganguly had announced his decision to step down as a judge and take the leap into politics. While the rumours on his joining the BJP were strong, both the Congress and the CPM had stepped out to welcome them into their fold, if he so willed.
Both the state Congress president, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and the CPM state secretary, Mohammad Salim, had sent out messages to Ganguly via the media. Ganguly dismissed the Congress as a “family-led party” and the CPM as “atheists”, claiming he was a believer.
In reply to a question on who had reached out first, Ganguly said, both he and the BJP had approached at the same time. “For the last seven days I was on leave, since I did not want to adjudicate in any matter. I did not want such accusations to be levelled at me,” he said.
