Venkaiah bats for CJI, rejects impeachment
V-P says notice lacks merit; Cong. to move SC
Indian judiciary on Monday entered uncharted territory when Rajya Sabha chairperson M. Venkaiah Naidu rejected the impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra submitted by seven Opposition parties, shortly after which the Congress party decided to move the apex court challenging the Vice-President’s order.
The Congress, in fact, will trigger an unprecedented crisis in the judiciary when their petition challenging Mr Naidu’s order is admitted. Convention demands that the CJI doesn’t hear the case himself and the next senior most judge — who is in this case is Justice J. Chelameswar — gets to hear it.
Justice Chelameswar is one of the four judges, who had held a press conference in January on the problems facing the Supreme Court, chief among which was the CJI’s functioning as master of the roster.
Rajya Sabha chairperson Mr Naidu, who had held extensive consultations with top legal and constitutional experts, including former chief justices and judges, before taking the decision, rejected the motion early Monday morning before the Supreme Court opened citing lack of substantial merit in it.
In a hard-hitting response, senior lawyer and Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who is one of the chief architects of the motion said: “We will certainly move a petition in the SC.”
In a detailed order, the Vice-President said he had a detailed conversation on all the aspects arising from the notice.
“Based on all this, I have come to the conclusion that this motion does not deserve to be admitted...On careful analysis and reflection, I find there is virtually no concrete verifiable imputation. We cannot allow any of our pillars of governance to be weakened by any thought, word or action,” he said, adding, “In the absence of credible and verifiable information placed before me which gives an indication of ‘misbehavior’ or ‘incapacity’, it would be inappropriate and irresponsible act to accept statement which have (sic) little imperial basis,” he said.
Mr Naidu further said that he was satisfied that admission of this notice of motion was “neither desirable nor proper”.
Turning to the Rajya Sabha handbook to reject the impeachment motion, he said: “In passing, I am constrained to observe that in this matter, the well-established parliamentary customs and conventions as have been delineated in para 2.2 of the Handbook for Members of Rajya Sabha, have been disregarded.”
However, the decision to go to court seemed to be the Congress’ alone. Other parties who had signed the motion, including Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party remained largely non-committal.