New Delhi, Apr 25 (TOI): Escalating his attack on Congress for seeking the removal of CJI Dipak Misra, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the opposition party’s failed move resulted from lawyer-MPs seeking to use Parliament to settle legal disputes.
In a hard-hitting blog post, Jaitley said some lawyer-MPs started copying the example of industrialists and businesspersons who would use parliamentary processes to influence policies.
“A very large number of eminent lawyers are now MPs. Most political parties have given nominations to some of them since their value, both in court and in parliamentary debates, is significant. The incidental impact of this has been the growing tendency of lawyer members to drag intra-court disputes into parliamentary process. The misconceived motion for the impeachment of the CJI is just one example of this,” the FM wrote.
The charge reflects the view in political circles, not restricted to only saffron-hued ones, that the Congress move was influenced by lawyers in its ranks.
Jaitley, however, targeted the Congress party as a whole for moving the notice on untenable grounds because it wanted to browbeat judiciary.
Saying removal of a judge was to be sought in the rarest of rare case and only on the basis of hard evidence of misconduct during his tenure rather than “hearsay” and “rumours”, he wrote, “The present impeachment motion has been filed on untenable grounds for the collateral purpose to intimidate the CJI and other judges of the highest court. The Congress party is capable of dragging the judges into unsavoury controversies and make them controversial, should their judicial opinion not appear favourable in the case in which the party has an interest.”
The remark articulated the strong view in BJP circles that Congress went for the CJI because he refused to accept the opposition party’s alleged stand that the Ayodhya matter should not be heard until after the 2019 elections and because the judge B H Loya case was not assigned to a bench of their choice.
“To any political analyst, it was clear that the impeachment motion would never get support of two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament. Congress knew this. Its object was not the passage of the motion but intimidation of India's judiciary,” Jaitley said.
He also rejected Congress’ criticism of Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu’s decision to turn down the motion against the CJI as well as its plan to challenge it in the SC.
The finance minister said the notice was no different from any other. “The power to admit or to decline a motion is part of the legislative process of Parliament.