Kolkata, Sep 17 (IANS) The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday questioned the appointment of Kajori Banerjee, the sister-in-law of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in the working committee of Kolkata’s renowned Rani Birla Girls’ College.

A single-judge bench of Justice Bivas Pattanayak questioned how, despite not being an educationist herself, Kajori Banerjee, also a councillor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), could be selected in the working committee of such a reported undergraduate institute of the city, and that too as the President.

Justice Pattanayak observed that, as per law, the president of a college's management committee should be a "person who is associated with education". But, in this case, the President was just a councillor and there was no evidence that she was associated with education. "Therefore, it needs to be seen whether her appointment was legal or not," the judge said.

At the same time, Justice Pattanayak put an interim stay on the show-cause notice and suspension order issued to the college Principal Srabanti Bhattacharaya by Kajor Banerjee last month. The interim stay will prevail for another eight weeks, and the next hearing in the matter will be after six weeks.

The show-cause notice and the suspension order were issued on August 29. The Principal challenged the show-cause notice and the suspension order before the single-judge bench of Justice Biswajit Basu.

But during the hearing, the state government counsel requested Justice Basu to recuse himself from hearing in the matter. Justice Basu expressed anguish over such an approach by the state government counsel. However, finally, he recused himself from hearing in the matter.

The matter was thereafter referred to the bench of Justice Pattanayak. The matter came up for hearing on Wednesday, and at the end, the single-judge bench ordered an interim stay on both the show-cause notice and the suspension order.

--IANS

src/vd