Challenging the single bench’s interim order, Banerjee and the three others — two newly-elected TMC MLAs Sayantika Banerjee and Reyat Hossain Sarkar, and TMC spokesperson Kunak Ghosh — filed an appeal before the Division Bench of Justice I P Mukerji and Justice Biswaroop Chowdhury.
Seeking a stay on the single bench order of Justice Krishna Rao, the chief minister’s counsel S N Mookherjee said that Banerjee did not make any defamatory statement against the Governor.
The former state advocate general submitted that her statement in question related to the discharge of public duty over the oath-taking of two newly-elected MLAs — Sayantika Banerjee and Reyat Hossain Sarkar. Mookherjee submitted that though Bose cited published news articles, he did not make the publications party in his defamation suit.
The Division Bench said the matter would be taken up for further hearing on Thursday, when Bose’s lawyer will make his counter submissions.
On July 16, the single bench of Justice Krishna Rao passed an interim order on the defamation suit filed by the Governor, restraining the chief minister and three TMC leaders from making any “defamatory or incorrect statement” against Governor Bose until August 14 when the matter will be heard next.
The court said the right to freedom of speech and expression “is not an unfettered right in the garb of which defamatory statements can be made to tarnish the reputation of a person”.
The Governor had approached the High Court after the chief minister’s remarks at a meeting at Nabanna, the state secretariat, in connection with the tension between the Raj Bhavan and the Assembly over refusal of the two newly elected TMC MLAs to take oath in Raj Bhavan.
This came close to two months after Kolkata Police launched an enquiry on May 2 into sexual harassment allegations made by a female staff of Raj Bhavan against Governor Bose. The Governor had hit back, saying he would not be “cowed down by engineered narratives”.
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