Kolkata, July 28 — The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday extended the stay on the demolition of the party office of Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee at Amtala in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district till August 6.
The order was given by the single-judge bench of Justice Suvar Ghosh, which will hear the matter again on the next date, when it is expected to take a final call on the matter.
On July 19, which was a Sunday, the matter was heard at a special bench of Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury, who issued an interim stay on the demolition till the time the matter is heard by a regular bench.
Accordingly, the matter came up for hearing at the regular single-judge bench of Justice Ghosh, who, after hearing both sides on Tuesday, extended the interim stay on the demolition till next week.
Arguing on behalf of the state government on Tuesday, Advocate General Surajit Nath Mitra said that while a case has been filed for demolition of construction on land plots numbers 509 and 512 there, in reality, there has been no demolition on these two plots. “The demolition took place on plot 507. Therefore, the court's previous order for interim stay should be withdrawn," he argued.
The said building, where demolition was done on July 18 and July 19 morning, was registered in the name of a corporate entity, namely Leaps & Bounds Private Limited, which is linked to Abhishek Banerjee, also the nephew of the Trinamool supremo and former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and his other family members.
In counter-argument, the Leaps & Bounds’ counsel, Kishor Datta, who is the previous Advocate General of West Bengal, argued that the demolition was conducted without serving prior notice to his client.
"It was demolished without giving any opportunity for my client to present his part of the argument. Even if there was illegal construction, the landowner should have been given time to demolish it first. If he had not demolished it, then the authorities could have taken action. In this case, that did not happen," he said.
After hearing the arguments of both the parties, Justice Ghosh observed that since three separate applications have been filed in this case, there was a need to hear them together. Therefore, the hearing of the case has been adjourned for the time being. The hearing of the case will be held on August 6 and till that time the interim stay on the demolition will continue.