The battle lines are drawn. For the city’s fiercest war of words. Over the country’s supreme book of law.
On Saturday evening, on the lawns of Calcutta Club, eight panellists will debate whether India’s Constitution has outlived itself.
The motion of the Sister Nivedita University presents Calcutta Club The Telegraph National Debate 2024: This house believes India does not need a new Constitution.
A highlight of the evening would be a keynote address by chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Her third tryst with this stage comes after 13 years.
In 2009, she had called out the incumbent CPM-led government for not granting autonomy to the (then) Presidency College. She was railing against the motion of the debate — a resurgent Bengal is an impossible dream.
In 2011, months before ousting the Left Front government and storming to power, she opposed the motion that “India will be better run if politicians are left out of the government”.
Unlike her previous appearances, she will not take part in the debate this time.
The ones who will also make a formidable line-up.
The debaters on Saturday will be Retd. Justice Sanjib Banerjee; Sugata Bose, historian and grand-nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose; Vikramjit Banerjee, additional solicitor-general of India; Arghya Sengupta, founder and research director of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; former Tripura and Meghalaya governor Tathagata Roy; Congress leader Alka Lamba; Roopen Roy, CEO and founder of Sumantrana, a strategy consulting firm for start-ups; and Left-leaning economist and activist Prasenjit Bose.
A section of the Right wing claims the Constitution is a colonial legacy.
The Preamble to the Constitution, a reflection of its core values, declares India to be a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”.
Besides a long stint at Calcutta High Court, Justice Banerjee has served as the chief justice of Madras High Court. He retired as the chief justice of Meghalaya High Court in November 2023.
As the chief justice of Madras High Court in April 2021, he had said “murder charges” should be slapped on the poll panel authorities for violation of Covid protocols during the Tamil Nadu Assembly election.
His transfer to the smaller Meghalaya High Court in November 2021 had triggered protests from lawyers at Madras High Court.
Sugata Bose, Gardiner professor of oceanic history and affairs at Harvard University and a former parliamentarian, is a staunch critic of the Narendra Modi government.
“The role of the State in the January 22 spectacle is the most decisive step
yet in recasting the Indian republic in a religious majoritarian mould,” he had told this newspaper, referring to inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
As one of the top legal officers in the country, Vikramjit Banerjee is part of the corridors of power in Delhi.
Arghya Sengupta, a Calcutta boy and a columnist for The Telegraph, leads one of the most prominent independent think tanks doing legal research.
Tathagata Roy, a former state BJP chief, is not one to hold back, even if it is about his own team. After the BJP lost the 2021 Bengal election and the 2022 civic polls, his tirade against the state unit and some of the leaders sent from Delhi to lead the poll battles embarrassed some in the party.
Alka Lamba heads the women’s wing of the Congress. A former MLA from Delhi, she has 871K followers on X (formerly Twitter).
Roopen Roy is a former managing director of Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers in India.
Prasenjit Bose is a convener of the Joint Forum Against NRC, which had organised a sustained campaign against the Centre’s citizenship thrust.
Neurosurgeon and avid debater Sandip Chatterjee will be the moderator.
