Impeachment motion was bound to fail, says Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is also leader of House in the Rajya Sabha, on Tuesday justified the rejection of the Opposition's impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, saying "it was filed on untenable grounds for collateral purpose to intimidate the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the highest judiciary."

He also asserted that the Rajya Sabha Chairman cannot be challenged in the Supreme Court as indicated by the Congress as "Parliament is supreme in its own jurisdiction and its process cannot be subjected to judicial review." The Congress put a question mark on the Supreme Court's independence through the impeachment motion and now going to the Supreme Court will bring down Parliament's supremacy, he said.

In a Facebook post, he said the motion was not admissible and it would have failed if not already rejected as it lacked substantial merit while the impeachment motion has to be brought in the rarest o rare cases where a "gross misconduct" has been indulged with strong and hard evidence as hearsay and rumours are not a substitute for evidence.

Even as Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu refuted the Congress charge of taking the decision in a haste, Jaitley regretted in his post titled 'Why the Malafide Impeachment Motion was bound to fail?' that the Congress is capable of dragging the judges, "should their judicial opinion (read judgment) not appear favourable in cases in which the party has an interest."

He said the Congress that collected signatures of various opposition parties knew that the impeachment motion would never get support of two-third majority in either Houses and as such "its object was not the passage of the Motion but intimidation of India's judiciary."

Jaitley, who is himself a senior advocate, noted that a very large number of eminent lawyers are MPs belonging to various parties and their value, both in courts 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."