The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday gave its approval to BJP and Congress for undertaking protest programmes condemning the rape and murder of a junior doctor of R. G. Kar Medical College & Hospital.
A single-judge bench of Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj granted permission to the BJP to conduct the sit-in demonstration at Esplanade in Kolkata, extending from August 29 to September 5. The BJP had moved the Calcutta High Court seeking permission after police purportedly refused it. Justice Bhardwaj, however said that not more than 1000 people can participate in the sit-in demonstration.
The same single-judge bench, however, discharged the petition by veteran Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and his party colleague Asutosh Chattopadhyay to conduct a protest rally from College Square to Shyambazar on Thursday condemning the heinous crime.
Welcoming the decision, BJP and Congress leadership said, "It has become a common practice that the police permission for any political programme by the opposition parties will be denied. The political parties move the court after which permission for the same is granted."
Leadership of both the parties claimed the Mamata government "lacks" minimum respect for the opposition parties.
Significantly, the Congress protest rally on Thursday will be first-of-its-kind on the rape and murder issue. Although Chowdhury had been quite vocal on the case since the beginning, the state unit of Congress had not been actively hitting the streets to date.
Earlier in the day, the Calcutta High Court had rejected a PIL filed by an advocate of the same court, Sanjay Das, against the 12-hour general strike called by the BJP in West Bengal. A division bench of Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya have also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the petitioner.
The BJP has given the 12-hour shutdown call to protest the "police action" on the participants of the 'Nabanna Abhijan' (March to Bengal Secretariat) rally. Youths had called the Nabanna rally on Tuesday to protest the rape and murder of the junior doctor.
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