SC notice to Bengal govt on BJP’s Yatra plea

New Delhi, Jan 8: The Supreme Court has issued notices to the West Bengal government on a petition filed by the BJP challenging the decision not to allow it to hold yatras in the state.

The BJP it may be recalled had moved the vacation bench of the Supreme Court, challenging the order which had put on hold its proposed yatras to be conducted in West Bengal.

The Calcutta High Court had reviewed its own decision, while putting the yatras on hold. A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court had said that it would review the order of the single judge, who had permitted the BJP to undertake the yatras in West Bengal.

The matter came up for hearing before a larger bench headed by Chief Justice Kargupta last week, and the case was sent back to the single-judge bench with instructions that it consider 36 intelligence inputs provided by the state administration before taking a decision on the BJP's "rath yatra" in West Bengal.

The earlier order of the single judge stands quashed.

Following the order of the single judge, the West Bengal government had approached the Calcutta High Court. It had challenged the order of the single judge which permitted the BJP to hold Rath Yatra rallies across the state as part of its 2019 Lok Sabha campaign.

The State Advocate General Kishore Dutta moved a petition opposing the single bench order before a division bench of the chief justice on Friday morning.

The state government has roped in senior counsel and veteran Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi to plead the case on behalf of the West Bengal Police.

The single judge had said that any threat to public order must be real and not imaginary or likely possibility. "Without providing for reasonable restrictions, the authorities have passed an order for total exclusion," the judge had also said.