CJ IMPEACHMENT CASE REACHES SC
There is no merit in opposition move, says leader
NEW DELHI: Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Monday threw out a Congress-led opposition motion to impeach the Chief Justice of India.
Naidu, as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, said the motion, signed by over 60 MPS, “lacked substantial merit.” The motion called for Chief Justice Dipak Misra’s impeachment six months before he retires on ive charges.
The Congress lashed out at Naidu. The party said it will move the Supreme Court with six other parties to challenge the “illegal” order that has “shattered the conidence of people.” Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal told the media that Naidu’s order jeopardised the country’s legal system.
Naidu said in an order running into 7 pages that the notice for the motion has “virtually no concrete veriiable imputation and doesn’t deserve to be admitted.” “We cannot allow any of our pillars of governance to be weakened by any thought, word or action,” said Naidu. “The motion presented by the MPS indicates a mere suspicion, conjecture or an assumption in the Prasad Education Trust case. The same does not constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt required to make out a case of proved misbehaviour,” the order by Naidu read.
He is known to have consulted legal and constitutional experts till late Sunday evening.
Sibal called Naidu’s order “unprecedented, illegal, ill-advised and hasty.” He said it had been passed without a full-ledged enquiry.
“We will certainly move a petition in the Supreme Court to challenge this order,” Sibal said. Never before in India’s history had a motion moved by MPS been dismissed at the preliminary stage, he said. “The order shattered the conidence of the people and jeopardised the legal system,” he added.
Congress spokesperson Surjewala said that within hours of the impeachment notice, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had shown “naked prejudice” by calling it a revenge petition, “virtually dictating the verdict” to the Rajya Sabha chairman.
Jaitley called the impeachment notice a “revenge petition,” accusing the “Congress and its friends” of using as a “political tool” the impeachment notice against the Chief Justice, who retires in six months.
In a tweet, Congress spokesperson and lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi said Naidu “expectedly” rejected the impeachment motion against Chief Justice Misra and that too within a day of his return to Delhi.
The opposition notice had signatures of 71 lawmakers from seven parties but seven have retired since. Senior Congress leaders like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram did not sign the notice.
The Constitution says the Chief Justice of India can be impeached only on grounds of proved misbehaviour or incapacity. The opposition backed its demand listing ive grounds, which, the Congress said, equals misbehaviour. These included the assigning of sensitive cases to handpicked judges, which was raised publicly in January by four top judges who accused the Chief Justice of abusing his position as “master of the roster.”