Former judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay had run-ins with lawyers, the Trinamool Congress and a fellow judge during his tenure at the Calcutta High Court and had even been pulled up by the Supreme Court for giving an interview on a scam while hearing cases related to it.
Having taken several unprecedented steps in his career, Mr Gangopadhyay has taken another - becoming the first high court judge in recent memory to resign and join a political party. The former judge has announced that he is likely to join the BJP on Thursday.
After Mr Gangopadhyay gave an interview to a Bengali news channel on the alleged job-for-bribe scam, in which he had allegedly spoken against senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee, the Supreme Court had come down heavily on him in April 2023 and said that judges have no business granting interviews on pending matters.