Calcutta HC to Hear PIL Challenging Doctorate for Mamata Banerjee Today

Kolkata: A PIL challenging the Calcutta University's (CU) decision to honour West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee with a D.Litt has been filed before the Calcutta High Court and is likely to be heard on Thursday.

The CU has announced that it will bestow the honorary D.Litt on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief, an alumnus, for her contribution to social service at its convocation on January 11.

The West Bengal government told the HC that a PIL challenging Calcutta University's decision to confer honorary D.Litt to CM Mamata was politically motivated.

Advocate General Kishore Dutta submitted before a division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice J Bhattacharya and Justice Arijit Banerjee that the decision to confer the honorary degree was taken by the syndicate and senate of the university and there was no sufferance of public interest.

Dutta claimed that as such it should not be treated as a PIL and the petition should be dismissed.

Petitioner Ranjugopal Mukherjee, a former professor of the university, claimed that the decision to confer the award was arbitrary and opaque.

His counsel Bikas Bhattacharya submitted that university issues and education itself are of public interest and as such the petition was justified to be a PIL.

He submitted that the syndicate or senate decision did not attribute any reason for conferring the award on Banerjee.

Claiming that the Senate members were nominated by the state, Bhattacharya submitted that "here the nominated persons are nominating the nominator."

He also claimed that no incumbent chief minister has been conferred with the honorary degree by Calcutta University.

However, the AG said there was no bar on awarding the honorary degree to an incumbent chief minister, and submitted that Pranab Mukherjee was conferred the degree when he was the president of the country.

Claiming that the petition "is out and out in political interest," Dutta submitted that "except character assassination, nothing is there."

Appearing for the university, counsel Saktinath Mukherjee submitted that the petition lacked "justifiability" and should be rejected at the outset.