Naidu: Did due diligence for a month on CJI issue

New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said his decision to reject the impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra was “timely” but “not a hasty one” and came after over a month of due diligence.

A day after the Congress-led Opposition’s impeachment motion was rejected by Mr Naidu, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the motion had been filed on “untenable grounds” and for “collateral purpose to intimidate the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the highest judiciary.”

“Freedom of expression allows that but ultimately truth prevails. I have done the just thing in the best possible manner expected of me,” sources quoted Mr Naidu as saying a day after he rejected the impeachment motion.

The Rajya Sabha Chairman was quoted as telling a group of 10 Supreme Court lawyers who met him to compliment him for the decision that his decision was in strict conformity with the provisions of the Constitution and the Judges Inquiry Act of 1968.

“I have done my job and am satisfied with it,” Mr Naidu was quoted saying. He also said that the Rajya Sabha Chairman’s office is not a mere post office, but that of a constitutional functionary.

Lashing out at the Congress, Mr Jaitley, also Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha, wrote in an article, “The Congress Party 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.”

He termed the motion as “poorly drafted”.

“Unquestionably, the impeachment motion was poorly drafted. The level of proof required to impeach a judge of being guilty of ‘proved misbehaviour’ has to be proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt… Any inquiry set up subsequent to a possible admission of a motion cannot be a fishing and roving inquiry. The inquiry does not have to search for better evidence or a better set of facts. The motion must contain a definitive case which makes out a case ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the judge is guilty of ‘proved misbehaviour,’” Mr Jaitley wrote in the article.

In an earlier article, Mr Jaitley had written that the impeachment notice was actually a “revenge petition” that being used as a “weapon” by the Congress and its friends after the falsehood of the Congress was established in the Justice Loya death case.

With the Congress indicating that it would challenge Mr Naidu’s order against the impeachment motion, Mr Jaitley said for the Congress 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.”