BJP approaches Supreme Court seeking permission to hold Rath Yatra in West Bengal

The BJP on Monday approached the Supreme Court against a Calcutta High Court order not allowing its Rath Yatra in West Bengal.

The BJP has challenged the Friday order of the division bench of the high court which had set aside the order of a single judge allowing the yatra.

The party approached the Supreme Court seeking permission to hold the campaign ‘Save Democracy Rally‘, which would cover 42 parliamentary constituencies in the state ahead of the 2019 general elections.

The BJP filed a plea, following which the party received the green signal from a single-judge bench of the same court on Thursday.

Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty said that the court failed to see the reasoning behind the state government’s argument and instead asked it to ensure that no breach of law-and-order occurs during the event.

“The division bench has not disallowed the yatra. Our legal battle will continue. So will our agitation and programmes in different districts,” BJP state president Dilip Ghosh had said.

“The state government wants to block the programme by hook or by crook. Therefore, we have called our rally a ‘Save Democracy’ rally,” added BJP Bengal unit vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar.

A jubilant BJP welcomed the verdict, and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took to social media to congratulate the Bengal party leadership.

“Congratulations to BJP, West Bengal for the High Court Judgement in their favour,” tweeted Jaitley.

The Mamata Banerjee government, however, appealed against the single-bench order before a division bench comprising Chief Justice Debasish Kargupta and Justice Shampa Sarkar. The division bench found the next day that Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty had not taken inputs from state intelligence agencies into account, and sent the case back with instructions that it study all the material submitted before arriving at a verdict.