New Delhi: The Congress MPs on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging the orders of the vice president and Chairman of Rajya Sabha Venkaiah Naidu rejecting the plea to admit an impeachment motion seeking removal of the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra from his office.
A five judge bench of Justices A.K. Sikri, S.A. Bobde, N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra and A.K. Goel will hear the petition on Tuesday. The four seniomost Judges, J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokmur and Kurian Joseph, who held a joint press conference on January 12 against the roster system adopted by the CJI Dipak Misra, are not in this bench.
In the morning, senior Congress leader and one of the signatories to the motion, Kapil Sibal, made a “mention” before Justice J. Chelameswar to take up the writ petition submitting that they could not mention the matter before the CJI as he was not competent to hear the case. Mr Sibal submitted that the manner in which the vice-president rejected the notice for impeachment raised serious constitutional issues. It involves interpretation of pertinent constitutional provisions.
Justice Chelameswar said he would inform on Tuesday whether he should decide about listing of a petition filed by two Congress MPs for initiating impeachment proceedings against the Chief Justice of India. “You come back tomorrow. We will see,” the judge told Mr Sibal.
The petitioners, Pratap Singh Bajwa of Punjab and Dr (Mrs) Amee Harshadray Yajnik of Gujarat, who are signatories to the Notice of Motion, said they are aggrieved by the impugned order of the Rajya Sabha Chairman, which is ex facie illegal, arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution, which should be quashed.
They said the impugned order is in the teeth of the constitutional mandate of Article 124(4) and 124(5) and the provisions of the Judges Inquiry Act. None of the reasons given by the Chairman in the Impugned Order carry any weight or are legally tenable.
It deserves to be set aside for being wholly extraneous and ultra vires to the provisions of the Constitution and the Inquiry Act.
