Assam: APW President Abhijit Sarma files Rs. 1 crore defamation lawsuit against former CJI Ranjan Gogoi

Digital Desk: Assam Public Works President Abhijit Sharma of Guwahati has filed a Rs 1 crore defamation complaint against former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi for allegedly authoring defamatory and misleading allegations about Sharma in his book "Justice for The Judge."

Sharma claimed in his presentation that the abovementioned comment by the Rajya Sabha Member and former CJI Ranjan Gogoi has impeded and tarnished his reputation amongst the people of Assam.

It should be noted that Sharma had filed a writ suit before the Supreme Court seeking an update to the NRC 1951 in Assam. During the pendency of the aforementioned writ petition, the process of updating the NRC began in Assam in 2015, and Prateek Hajela was appointed as the State Co-Ordinator of the National Register of Citizens (SCNR). 

Furthermore, the Supreme Court of India monitored the entire process of updating the NRC in the state of Assam, and the Co-ordinator of NRC Assam was required to present reports to the apex court regularly. 

Sharma was the one who addressed a news conference in 2017 claiming fraud in the NRC update process in Assam under the supervision of Prateek Hajela. Sharma was even summoned before the Supreme Court Bench, where he was chastised and directed to file a suo-moto contempt case against Sharma, in which he was required to make an unconditional apology before the Supreme Court.

However, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India determined that Sharma's claim of theft of funds during the NRC update process was true.

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Prateek Hajela was reportedly deputed from Assam to Madhya Pradesh. Following this occurrence, Ranjan Gogoi authored his memoirs under the title "Justice For the Judge," in which he purportedly stated the following statement, which Sharma felt was defamatory. "At the local level, personal attacks on SCNR and veiled attacks on the judges, particularly me, by local politicians, particularly Abhijit Sharma, the president of Assam Public Works (petitioner in w.p. No.274 of 2009), convinced us (the Bench) that orders should be issued to protect Hajela from undue harassment and calculated harm." The Bench issued a decision on 18 October 2019 for his deputation on inter-cadre transfer to Madhya Pradesh, his native state."

it further stated, "Following things, such as the filing of FIRs against Hajela and other NRC officials, allegations of corruption and threats to order CBI probes, as well as massive misinformation to the media and widespread publicity, have convinced me that the Bench was fully justified in passing the rather unusual order for Hajela's inter-cadre transfer under Article 142 of the Constitution."