Ex Hight Court Judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay To Battle Against TMC’s Poet In Tamluk (image-facebook/

In the Tamluk Lok Sabha seat of West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay as their candidate. He is titled as the ‘surprise candidate’ by the saffron party. Meanwhile, the TMC has chosen Debangshu Bhattacharya, a young party spokesperson against the former judge. 

However, the contest in the region will be a litmus test for the parties as the region is still a ruling party bastion but controlled by a family whose members have moved to the saffron camp since 2020. 

61-year-old resigned from the post on March 5 just five months before his retirement and joined the saffron party. He has resigned by leaving a trail of judgment including the CBI probe into the bribe-for-job scam in the education department, which BJP has been using as election issues against TMC. 

Gangopadhyay commenced his tenure at the high court as an additional judge in 2018 and was later appointed as a permanent judge in July 2020. A decade ago, he made a similar move in his career. With retirement slated in three months, he transitioned his career in the West Bengal Civil service to practicing law. 

Justice Gangopadhyay has been involved in many controversies. He had defied orders of larger Benches and had run-ins with lawyers and the ruling Trinamool Congress party. He had a dispute with a fellow judge at the High Court and even gave a TV interview regarding a case he was hearing.

Since 2020, he has passed many orders directing the CBI and ED to investigate the alleged school jobs scam in West Bengal. He has terminated more than 32,000 teacher appointments in one of his orders which was later stayed by a Division bench. 

Tamluk will go to polls on May 25 along with seven other seats in the South Bengal region.