Madhya Pradesh High Court has lifted the interim stay on the execution of an arrest warrant issued against Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Abhishek Banerjee in a defamation case, potentially escalating the legal challenges faced by the party’s national general secretary.
A single bench of Justice Pramod Kumar Agarwal, in an order passed on Wednesday, dismissed Banerjee’s petition and vacated the stay that had been in place since November 2025. The stay had earlier halted the execution of an arrest warrant issued by a special MP-MLA court in Bhopal.
The defamation case was filed in 2021 by former Indore MLA Akash Vijayvargiya, son of senior BJP leader and minister Kailash Vijayvargiya. The complaint alleges that Banerjee referred to Akash as a “goon” during a political rally in Kolkata in November 2020.
Following the issuance of the arrest warrant by the Bhopal court, Banerjee had approached the High Court seeking relief. In his plea, he argued that as a sitting MP, he was unlikely to abscond, prompting the court to grant an interim stay on November 12 last year. However, during the latest hearing on Wednesday, no one appeared on behalf of Banerjee. Taking note of this absence, the court observed that it appeared the petitioner had lost interest in pursuing the matter.
Consequently, Justice Agarwal lifted the stay on the arrest warrant, dismissed the petition, and directed that a copy of the order be forwarded to the concerned Bhopal court for further proceedings.
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