Two PILs filed in Calcutta HC on Messi event chaos in Kolkata

Two public interest litigations (PILs) were filed at a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Monday regarding the lapses in management at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata on December 13 during an event featuring football star Lionel Messi. 

The first PIL filed by senior advocate Billwadal Bhattacharya demanded a thorough probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the sale of tickets, where different tickets fetched different prices, starting from Rs 3,000 to Rs 12,000.

The second PIL, filed by senior counsel Sabyasachi Chattopadhyay, has demanded a probe by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) into the matter.

Chattopadhyay's PIL has challenged the formation of a committee headed by a retired justice of the Calcutta High Court to probe the mismanagement at the Messi show. The petition has claimed that the probe committee announced by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was nothing but eyewash and was intended to protect the principal offenders behind the management.

The division bench headed by the Calcutta High Court’s Acting Chief Justice Sujoy Paul has admitted both petitions, and they are expected to come up for hearing on Tuesday.

The said probe committee announced by the Chief Minister immediately after the event of chaos at Sal Lake Stadium is headed by Justice (Retd.) Ashim Kumar Ray of the Calcutta High Court. The other two members of the committee are West Bengal Chief Secretary, Manoj Pant, and the additional secretary to the state home & hill affairs department, Nandini Chakraborty.

The Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, has written a letter to Governor C.V. Ananda Bose and requested him to order an independent judicial probe into the matter, scrapping the committee announced by the Chief Minister.

Adhikari has also claimed that it is headed by a retired judge who simultaneously holds the office of Chairperson of a statutory authority functioning directly under the administrative control of the state government, and others are senior-most bureaucrats of the same executive hierarchy whose decisions, omissions, and complicity are already under scrutiny.

“Hence, the said committee announced by the Chief Minister is structurally compromised,” Adhikari claimed in his letter to the Governor.