Abhijit Gangopadhyay, first HC judge to join politics after resigning, leaves behind a chequered record
Abhijit Gangopadhyay (retired) was the 'hero' of job seekers and victims of the alleged recruitment scam. He earned the moniker of people's judge for his frequent run-ins with the Trinamool Congress government and for his scathing verdicts against it. He was also involved in an unsavoury incident with fellow judges, prompting intervention from the Supreme Court.
The unsavoury incident began with Gangopadhyay ordering a CBI probe on a writ petition last September by an MBBS aspirant who contended that students who did not belong to the Scheduled Tribes category were securing admissions in the state's medical colleges using fake certificates. However, a division bench of justices Soumen Sen and Uday Kumar stayed the verdict the same day, in an unusual turn of events. Justice Gangopadhyay, however, heard the matter and held the division bench's order 'illegal'. He accused justice Sen of misconduct and said he was 'acting on behalf of some political party in the state'. The SC intervened and transferred the case to itself.
While becoming the first sitting judge of a higher court to join a political party by resigning from active duty, Gangopadhyay has raised questions on judicial ethics and code of conduct for judges. «Who will trust his judgements now? It makes mincemeat of the code of conduct for judges,» Supreme Court advocate Prashanth Bhushan posted on X.
Gangopadhyay had frequent run-ins with the government in several cases earlier too, prominent among them the teachers' recruitment case, where he ordered a CBI
