Bengal Rath Yatra: SC refuses early hearing on BJP plea challenging blockade by Calcutta High Court

New Delhi: Supreme Court, on Monday, refused to give an urgent hearing to the appeal by before vacation bench on an appeal of West Bengal unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against the Calcutta High Court's division bench order on Rath Yatras in West Bengal. 

The matter is now likely to come for a hearing only in January. Earlier today, the West Bengal BJP had filed an appeal in the apex court against a Calcutta High Court division bench order refusing permission for holding rallies in West Bengal. 

The BJP plans to hold 'save democracy rallies' in West Bengal hit a roadblock after the Calcutta High Court quashed an order by a single judge bench, which had given the party a go-ahead to hold the rallies. While stalling the BJP plans, Chief Justice Debasish Kar Gupta and Justice Shampa Sarkar



sent the matter back to the single bench and asked it to reconsider the intelligence inputs given by 31 police stations and five police commissioner jurisdictions.

The West Bengal government under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had moved Calcutta HC challenging the single bench's order, which had asked BJP to continue with the rally without 'creating any trouble'. The BJP had planned three Rath Yatras from Cooch Behar, South 24 Parganas Gangasagar district and temple town of Tarapith in Birbhum district on December 7,9 and 14. The rallies were to be flagged off by party chief Amit Shah and were expected to cover 42 Lok Sabha constituencies.

TMC government had rejected the BJP plea citing that there was a "grave apprehension of major breach of peace and communal violence during and in the aftermath".