Mamata Banerjee undermining judicial authority, claims BJP MP in letter to CJI

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Jyotormoy Singh Mahato on Monday wrote to Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, urging action against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly undermining judicial authority.

Mahato objected to Banerjee’s statements about a Supreme Court order that upheld the termination of about 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staffers in the wake of bribery allegations. The staffers had been appointed by the West Bengal’s School Service Commission.

Mahato, the MP from West Bengal Purulia, said that Banerjee, instead of upholding the Supreme Court verdict, “chose to criticise the judiciary in a press conference held at the state secretariat, flanked by senior IAS officers”.

The BJP MP remarked that a sitting chief minister questioning the Supreme Court “embodies a dangerous precedent of judicial anarchy”.

Mahato urged the chief justice to “ensure that those who have disrupted the court under the protection of political power face appropriate consequences under the law”.

Earlier on Monday, Banerjee said she would do everything possible to restore the dignity of those who lost their jobs in the state, PTI reported.

“Please don’t consider that we have accepted it [the order],” the news agency quoted the Trinamool Congress chief as saying during a meeting in Kolkata with a section of teachers affected by the order. “We are not stone-hearted,...

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