Kolkata: The Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), the students’ wing of the Trinamool Congress, on Monday approached the Calcutta High Court seeking permission to hold a rally in Kolkata on the occasion of its foundation day on August 28.
A single-judge bench of Justice Sougata Bhattacharya had admitted the petition and posted the matter for hearing on August 19.
The petition had been filed by the TMCP faction, which is still in the “original but minority” faction of the Trinamool with continued allegiance towards former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, who is the party’s general secretary.
Moving the petition on Monday, the petitioner’s counsel Arka Kumar Nag argued that although the three letters of requests were sent to Kolkata Police on July 27, August 3 and August 7, informing the police of the rally in the city on August 28, there had not been any reply from it in the matter till date.
That is why the TMCP has now approached the Calcutta High Court for permission, he said.
A rally on the occasion of the foundation day of TMCP is organised every year at the base of the Mahatma Gandhi statue at Mayo Road in central Kolkata. However, the situation is different this time. After the electoral debacle in the recently concluded West Bengal assembly polls, the party had split into three factions.
A group of Trinamool’s Lok Sabha members has joined the National Citizens’ Party of India (NCPI). The second group is that of the “rebel but majority” faction led by the party’s expelled legislator, Ritabrata Banerjee, who is currently the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly. The rest, though very few, are still with the Mamata Banerjee-led “original but minority” faction.
In the petition, the petitioner had sought permission to hold the rally at the same place where it had been organising it for the last so many years.
(IANS)
