Calcutta HC judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay resigns, set to join BJP

Kolkata: After tendering his resignation on Tuesday, Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay announced that he would join the BJP on March 7. He said he was ready to contest against the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Slamming the TMC, Gangopadhyay said erosion has already started developing within Bengal’s ruling party and expressed his doubt whether it would at all exist before the 2026 Assembly elections in West Bengal.

“I have decided to join the BJP as it is a national party which is fighting against TMC’s corruption. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a hardworking person and tirelessly working for the development of our country,” said Gangopadhyay.

Asked why he did not opt for the CPI(M) or the Congress as a political platform to join, Gangopadhyay said, “I believe in religion and God which the CPI(M) does not. Congress is a party which has been the zamindari of a family for years.”

Throwing a challenge to the Trinamool Congress’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee, who criticised Gangopadhyay on several occasions for his verdicts, the former high court justice said, “If the party asks me to contest against him, will I flee? Never. He has a troop of hoodlums in his constituency Diamond Harbour. I will show how to face his henchmen. I will defeat him with a margin of lakhs of votes.”

Gangopadhyay said the Narada sting operation in 2016, in which many people resembling senior TMC leaders were seen taking bribes, was a conspiracy hatched by a prominent TMC leader.

“The company behind the sting operation was owned by the TMC leader’s relative. The operation was carried out to malign senior TMC officers. Many of the victims of the conspiracy still call the Taalpatar Shepai (thin foot-soldier) TMC leader as a Senapati (commander) of the party. I don’t know which war he has won,” he said.