Call on CJI notice not hasty: Naidu
NEWDELHI: A day after he rejected the Opposition’s notice seeking the Chief Justice of India’s impeachment, and came in for criticism for the alacrity with which he did so, Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday defended his “timely, not hasty” decision and finance minister Arun Jaitley wrote in a blog that the Congress is trying to intimidate India’s judiciary.
At a meeting with Supreme Court lawyers here on Tuesday, Naidu said: “Some Hon’ble Members of the House had a point of view and the right to express it while I had a responsibility cast on me. I have done my job and am satisfied with it”. On Monday, Naidu rejected notice of a motion for the removal of the CJI by six Opposition parties including the Congress. He maintained that the notice lacked substantial merit and that the allegations were “neither tenable nor admissible”.
Naidu’s refusal left Opposition leaders such as Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist
The motion was filed to intimidate the Chief Justice of India and other judges ARUN JAITLEY, Finance minister
Party of India (Marxist), complaining that “the dismissal of the impeachment notice is another step to destroy the independence of the judiciary.”
The notice, signed by 64 Rajya Sabha MPs, had listed allegations of “misbehavior” and “misuse of authority” against the CJI.
An unfazed Naidu said on Tuesday that he acted quickly because “any issue in public domain concerning the CJI requires to be resolved at the earliest following prescribed procedures so as to prevent the atmosphere from being further vitiated.” e added: “Issues raised in the notice mostly pertained to the functioning of the Supreme Court and they have to be resolved internally. Any other means of seeking to address them amounts to interference in the independence of judiciary.”
Officials said the lawyers who met Naidu pointed out that a similar notice against Supreme Court judge JC Shah was rejected by the then Lok Sabha Speaker GS Dhillon in 1970 and that justice Shah later became the CJI.
“They also recalled that a notice for removal of (Sikkim high court judge) Justice PD Dinakaran was admitted within three days,” a statement from the vice president’s office said. In his post, Jaitley maintained that the Congress would be committing a blunder if it challenges Naidu’s decision in the apex court. He emphasized that Naidu and the Lok Sabha speaker have the sole discretion to decide the fate of parliamentary motions: “A motion under Article 124(4) (impeachment of CJI) is no different from any other motion where Chair has a discretion to admit it or decline to do so,” he said. Jaitley added that the conventional view says the Chair’s discretion is not justiciable in a court of law.
“For the Congress Party to carry forward its mistake of subjecting legislative processes to judicial review would be a blunder. The Parliament is supreme in its own jurisdiction. Its process cannot be subjected to judicial review,” Jaitley added.
Describing the motion as poorly drafted, Jaitley said, “The Congress is capable of dragging the judges into an unsavoury controversy and make them controversial, should their judicial opinion not appear favourable in the cases in which the party has an interest. To any political analyst it was clear that the impeachment motion would never get support of two-third majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Congress Party knew this. Its object was not the passage of the motion but intimidation of India’s judiciary.”
The finance minister also took potshots at Congress’ legal brains in the Rajya Sabha. “A very large number of eminent lawyers are now Members of Parliament. Most political parties have given nominations to some of them since their value, both in court and Parliamentary debates, is significant. The incidental impact of this has been a growing tendency of lawyer members to drag intra-court disputes into the parliamentary process. The misconceived motion for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of India is just one example of this.” Responding to the Rajya Sabha chair’s defence and Jaitley’s views, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said: “The BJP is playing politics by blocking inquiry so that the truth does not emerge.”