Kolkata, March 23 – A single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court granted an interim protection to Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly, from any coercive police action in an FIR registered against him at the Khardah Police Station in North 24 Parganas district.
The single-judge bench of Justice Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee granted the interim protection to Adhikari for 12 weeks, until July, and ruled that until further orders, the police would not be able to take any action against him, including arrest. The matter will be reheard in July.
Adhikari is simultaneously contesting from the Nandigram Assembly constituency in East Midnapore district, where he is the sitting MLA, and from Bhabanipur in South Kolkata, where he is pitted against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The Khardah Police Station filed a suo motu FIR against the LoP on December 29, 2020, for making objectionable remarks. Adhikari had approached the Calcutta High Court seeking dismissal of the complaint to avoid any trouble before the elections.
On Monday, the Calcutta High Court also provided relief for the LoP's younger brother and former Lok Sabha member, Dibyendu Adhikari, who approached the court complaining that even after vacating a government flat earlier allotted to him, he had been denied the "no dues" certificate.
Dibyendu Adhikari is the BJP candidate from the Egra Assembly constituency, also in East Midnapore district.
Even as he had sought the 'no dues certificate' before the publication of the candidate list, he did not get it from the authorities concerned. Therefore, he approached the Calcutta High Court on March 10.
After the matter came up for hearing on Monday, a single-judge bench of Justice Krishna Rae, the state's advocate general, handed over a photocopy of the no-dues certificate to Dibyendu Adhikar's counsel, Billwadal Bhattacharya.
The state government's counsel informed the court that the authorities had issued the no-dues certificate on March 19, and hence it would take a few more days to reach the candidate.
