Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to President Pranab Mukherjee seeking an "appropriate action" to remove former Supreme Court judge Justice Ashok Kumar Ganguly as the chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission, a senior minister in the state said today.
"The Chief Minister has set the ball rolling for Ganguly's removal from the WBHRC chairman's post by writing to the President seeking appropriate action... Now it's in the President's domain," state law minister Chandrima Bhattacharya said today. "The Human Rights is a subject that comes under the Home Department, a portfolio held by the Chief Minister herself," Bhattacharya added.
It was learnt that Ganguly has not been attending office since yesterday, WBHRC sources said.
Talking about the procedure for removal of a chairperson of a state Human Rights Commission, the law minister said, "The Human Rights Act provides for the procedure for removal of its chairperson."
The Human Rights Act, 1993, as per the WBHRC website, provides that "(1) Subject to the provisions of sub-section (2), the chairperson or any other Member of the Commission shall only be removed from his office by order of the President on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity after the Supreme Court, on reference being made to it by the President, has, on inquiry held in accordance with the procedure prescribed in that behalf by the Supreme Court, reported that the Chairperson or such other Member, as the case may be, ought on any such ground to be removed.
"However, the Act also says in sub-section (2) that "notwithstanding anything in sub-section (1), the President may by order remove from office the Chairperson or any other Member if the Chairperson or such other Member is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for an offence which in the opinion of the President involves moral turpitude."
Ganguly, when asked about resigning as the chairman of the WBHRC, had said, "I have not decided. I am undecided. Time has not come to think about it." He has since then refused to comment further on the issue.
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