Kolkata:Four West Bengal Bar Council members Monday wrote to the Chief Justice of India claiming its chairman and TMC MLA Ashok Deb acted on his own in seeking the removal of Calcutta High Court Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal.
Registering their dissent, the four elected members of the Bar Council jointly wrote to the CJI that the letter by Deb is "highly derisive and by no figment of imagination represents the sentiments of the majority of the bar".
The letter came a day after Deb, a six-term MLA, demanded Bindal's removal on the alleged ground that he was "biased" in his approach. "The contents of the letter was neither discussed as an agenda in any meeting of the council, nor we the below members were aware about it until through some social media posts," the letter signed by Kailash Tamoli, Rabindranath Bhattacharya, Samir Paul and Mihir Das said.
Read:West Bengal Bar Council seeks removal of ACJ of Calcutta HC
"The chairman has acted on his own, without consulting the elected members of the Bar Council of West Bengal," they claimed.
The four alleged the June 25 letter was written by Deb to "please" the ruling party of which he is an MLA. Deb's letter to the CJI, meanwhile, came in for criticism by also the BJP, which sought to know if the move was an attempt to "browbeat the judiciary". The saffron party claimed that Deb made the demand as the high court is holding the Mamata Banerjee administration to account for alleged post-poll violence. Deb, in his letter to CJI N V Ramana, said, "We beseech your Lordship to take immediate steps for removal of Hon'ble Justice Rajesh Bindal as a Judge of Calcutta High Court.