The West Bengal wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday filed a caveat in the Supreme Court in connection with the order passed by the Calcutta High Court division bench on the rath-yatra. This was a day after a division bench of the Calcutta High Court ordered the Bengal administration to discuss the matter with the party representatives.
The move by the BJP means that the party will have to be informed in case the West Bengal government moves an application to the Supreme Court against the High Court order.
The High Court division bench had asked the chief secretary, home secretary and the director-general of state police to discuss all the aspects related to the yatra by Wednesday and to convey their decision by Friday.
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Earlier a single bench of the Calcutta High Court had earlier told the BJP that it could not hold the rally as it might cause “communal tension”.
The BJP’s rathyatra was scheduled to be flagged off from Cooch Behar on Friday by the party’s national president Amit Shah. There are plans for two other rallies by the BJP – one to be flagged off from Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas on December 9 and another from Birbhum’s Tarapith on December 14. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address a rally in Kolkata as the three yatras conclude.
The massive rath-yatra is scheduled to cover all 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. But the state government denied permission and submitted to the High Court that the rally might cause communal tension.
After cancelling his Cooch Behar trip, Shah was scheduled to make a trip to Kolkata. However, he later cancelled his Kolkata trip scheduled on Saturday.
