The Supreme Court on January 29 transferred from the Calcutta High Court to itself a case of candidates rampantly gaining medical admissions with the help of fake caste certificates in West Bengal after conflicting orders led to one Calcutta High Court judge slinging mud on another.
A five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and four seniormost judges had to take suo motu cognisance of the happenings in the Calcutta High Court and convened on January 27 to stay proceedings in the High Court in the case.
The trajectory of the case took an ugly turn when one of the judges, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, sitting as a Single Judge Bench, made personal allegations of political bias against Justice Soumen Sen, who presided over the Division Bench which stayed the former’s order to transfer the medical admissions case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
