Kolkata, Sep 19 (IANS) In an unprecedented development, an FIR has been registered against the principal of a reputed girls’ college in Kolkata, who had earlier challenged a decision of West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee’s sister-in-law, Kajori Banerjee, as the president of the working committee of the college.

Although the FIR was registered reportedly on September 12 at Shakespeare Sarani Police Station, information on it surfaced just on Thursday that the complaint came just a day after a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court headed by Justice Bivas Pattanayak, had put an interim stay on the show cause notice and suspension order slapped on Srabanti Bhattacharaya, the principal of Kolkata’s renowned Rani Birla Girls’ College, by Kajori Banerjee as the president of the working committee of the same college.

Justice Pattanayak, at the same time, had questioned the appointment of Kajori Banerjee as the president of the working committee of the same college. Justice Pattanayak questioned how, despite not being an educationist herself, Kajori Banerjee, also a councillor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), could be selected in the working committee of such a reported undergraduate institute of the city, and that too as the President.

Justice Pattanayak observed that, as per law, the president of a college’s management committee should be a “person who is associated with education”. But, in this case, the President was just a councillor and there was no evidence that she was associated with education. “Therefore, it needs to be seen whether her appointment was legal or not,” the judge said.

Just a day after those scathing observations from the Calcutta High Court, information surfaced that a teacher of Hindi at the same college, Mantu Das, who hailed from a socially backward class background, had registered an FIR against the principal of the college, accusing her of humiliating him on the basis of his caste background.

In his FIR, Das claimed that although he had been associated as a Hindi teacher of the college since 2014, he was humiliated by Srabanti Bhattacharaya since she joined the college as a principal in 2022.

The principal had vehemently denied the allegations and said that she would not speak about this issue further since this fresh development was reportedly linked to the college-related case that is pending at the Calcutta High Court.

However, political and academic circles have started raising questions on the timing of the FIR registered against the principal. According to them, when Das had himself claimed that he was humiliated by the principal since 2022, why did he wait for three long years to register the FIR in the matter, and that too at a time when a crucial hearing on a college-related case was going on at Calcutta High Court?

–IANS

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