KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday asked the West Bengal government to submit on Wednesday the video recording of the failed meeting held between the state government and BJP representatives at state police headquarters Lalbazaar last week.
The move gains significance as even though the court had asked the state government and BJP to sort out their differences over rath yatra and not 'rush to the High Court' for everything, the court ultimately has to act as the mediator in the dispute between the two sides.
The single bench of Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty also asked BJP to finalise the revised dates of the rath yatra and wanted to know how the saffron party would conduct its programme. The case would be next heard on Wednesday.
The hearing into the case was held after BJP filed a petition in the High Court on Monday against state government decision to not grant permission for the rathyatra citing fears of communal tensions and expressing inability to provide such a large security cover for the 42-day programme.
During the hearing, BJP lawyers argued that the BJP's programme is political in nature and Article 19 of the constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression and the state government cannot deny permission to any political rally but can put its own clauses to it.
They also said that BJP was ready to reduce the duration of the programme and argued that if the state police fail to provide security, Army be called in to provide security to the rath yatra, sources revealed.
The state government refused to grant permission to the 42-day-long rath yatra that was slated to cover all the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies of the state citing intelligence reports that stated that the rath yatra could cause communal tensions and expressing inability to provide 5,000 policemen for security cover of the rath yatra programme for 42 days during the upcoming Christmas to New Year festive season.