‘Blunder, poorly drafted’: Jaitley slams Cong over CJI impeachment

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the Congress plan to move the Supreme Court challenging Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu’s rejection of its impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra a “blunder”.

It would be “suicidal” for the Congress to subject the parliamentary process of rejection of a motion to judicial review, Jaitley said today. He also fully endorsed Naidu’s rejection of the impeachment on the grounds that the charges of forgery, bribery and bench-fixing against the CJI were based on “a mere suspicion, a conjecture or assumption” and did not constitute proof “beyond reasonable doubt” required to make out a case of “proved misbehaviour”.

Presumed innocence

The Congress has since maintained that it would move the Supreme Court against Naidu’s decision because the Rajya Sabha Chairman had presumed innocence on the part of the CJI without observing the constitutionally mandated procedure of getting a committee to enquire into the charges made out by 64 MPs from seven Opposition parties.

Jaitley, however, justified Naidu’s decision, saying that motion must, in itself, contain a definitive case “beyond reasonable doubt” that the judge is guilty of “proved misbehaviour”. This counters Congress veteran Kapil Sibal’s assertion that the charges can only be proved after a parliamentary enquiry has been conducted. “How do you prove a conspiracy ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ without conducting an inquiry,” Sibal had argued.

Jaitley said the inquiry does not have to search for the facts and the motion moved by the Congress in itself should have made a definitive case for proven misbehaviour.

“Any inquiry set up subsequent to a possible admission of a motion cannot be a fishing and roving inquiry. The inquiry dos 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’,” said Jaitley while maintaining that the Opposition motion was “poorly drafted”.

Questions motive

Besides maintaining that the impeachment motion lacks sufficient evidence for Parliament to admit it and that the presiding officer’s discretion in accepting or rejecting cannot be subjected to judicial review, Jaitley then turned to elaborate the motives of the MPs for moving the motion. He had earlier maintained that it was a “revenge petition” to intimidate the CJI because the Congress is unhappy with the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the pleas for an independent probe into the death of CBI Judge BH Loya.

Judge Loya was hearing the fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh et al in which BJP president Amit Shah was once an accused. The FM’s contention was that having failed to get the judiciary to implicate Shah, the Congress was using impeachment as a “political tool” to intimidate the judges.

He elaborated on the point, saying that a large number of lawyers who have become parliamentarians are “dragging intra court disputes into the parliamentary process”.

COMMENT NOW