The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday restrained the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and three others from making any defamatory or incorrect statements against Governor CV Ananda Bose.
The restrain has been imposed until August 14 when the matter will be heard next, Bar and Bench reported.
Justice Krishna Rao passed the order on an interim application moved by Governor Bose in the defamation suit filed by him against Banerjee, two elected members of the West Bengal State Legislative Assembly – Sayantika Banerjee and Reyat Hossain Sarkar — and leader of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), Kuna Ghosh.
Bose had moved the High Court after Banerjee had made a statement that women no longer felt safe to enter the Raj Bhavan in West Bengal due to recent harassment allegations against the Governor.
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The Court said that Bose is constitutional authority who cannot counter the personal attacks being made by Banerjee and other TMC leaders against him by using social media platforms.
It also observed that 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.
“This Court if of the view that in appropriate cases where the Court is of the view that the statements have been made in reckless manner in order to cause injury to the reputation of the plaintiff, the Court would be justified in granting injunction. If at this stage, an interim order is not granted it would give the free hands to the defendants to continue making defamatory statements against the plaintiff and continue to tarnish the reputation of the plaintiff,” it added, Bar and Bench reported.
The Court thus restrained Banerjee and others from making any defamatory or incorrect statement against Bose “by way of publication and on social platforms till August 14, 2024.”
Governor Bose had told the Court that Banerjee and other TMC leaders were making false and frivolous allegations against him and have exposed him to hatred, contempt and ridicule.
In response, CM Banerjee’s counsel submitted that she will justify her stand by placing on record the documents on the basis of which she had made the statements.
“The incident of Raj Bhavan is already on public domain and as such it cannot be said that the said articles are defamatory,” the Court was told.
The Governor approached the court after the Chief Minister’s remarks at a meeting at Nabanna, the state secretariat, in connection with the recent tension between the Raj Bhavan and the Assembly over the 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”.