What Exactly Does The Congress Hope To Achieve With The Impeachment Motion Against The CJI?
The answer most likely to be correct – delay, or altogether prevent, an unfavourable ruling in the Ram Janmabhoomi case.
So opposition parties led by the Congress have met with the Vice President and have submitted to him a notice for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. The other parties which have agreed to the motion are the Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist),the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Samajwadi Party (SP),the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).
By doing this, they risk serious embarrassment as they just don’t have the numbers to make a successful bid for the removal of the chief justice. Moreover, the process of impeachment is something that has never really been activated successfully in the past against a judge of the honourable Supreme Court. The last time the provision was invoked against a judge of the apex court was in the early 1990s against Justice V K Ramaswami. The said motion did fail quite spectacularly on the floor of the House and the judge in question went on to serve the remainder of his term with some semblance of distinction as well. He even unsuccessfully contested an election to the Lok Sabha against Vaiko of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(MDMK) in Tamil Nadu from the Sivakasi constituency. In this regard, it would be instructive to examine the bare text of the relevant Constitutional provision which is produced below:
124 (4) A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.
Simply put, what is needed in order to actually remove a judge of the Supreme Court is a special majority of the members present and voting in both Houses of Parliament. Do the Congress or the Left or any of the other members that group have the requisite strength? The answer to this, as mentioned earlier, is a resoundingly and unequivocally in the negative.
Having said that, the provisions of the Judges Inquiry Act of 1968 do offer some hope to the opposition, inasmuch as under the said Act, they might find it not altogether impossible to initiate proceedings, if not take them to their logical conclusion. Section 3 of the said Act whereby the procedure for initiation has been laid down is reproduced below:
3 (1) If notice is given of a motion for presenting an address to the President praying for the removal of a Judge signed,- (a) in the case of a notice given in the House of the People, by not less then one hundred members of that House; (b) in the case of a notice given in the Council of States, by not less, then fifty members of that Council, then, the Speaker or, as the case may be, the Chairman may, after consulting such persons, if any, as he thinks fit and after considering such materials, if any, as may be available to him either admit the motion or refuse to admit the same. (2) If the motion referred to in sub-section (1) is admitted, the Speaker or, as the case may be, the Chairman shall keep the motion pending and constitute as soon as may be for the purpose of making an investigation into the grounds on which the removal of a Judge is prayed for, a Committee consisting of three members of whom - (a) one shall be chosen from among the Chief Justice and other Judges of the Supreme Court; (b) one shall be chosen from among the Chief Justices of the High Courts; and (c) one shall be a person who is in the opinion of the Speaker or, as the case may be, the Chairman, a distinguished jurist. .
A perusal of the said provision would make it amply clear that the opposition must mobilise at least a hundred members (Lok Sabha) or fifty members (Rajya Sabha) depending upon wherein it intends to initiate the process. Having said that, from thereon it is the discretion of the Speaker (Lok Sabha) or the Vice President (Rajya Sabha) as the case may be, to first make an assessment as to whether the motion is fit for him to constitute a committee to frame charges and conduct a prima facie appreciation of whether the complaints made against the judge in question contain any substance.
Assuming that the opposition manages to negotiate the second hurdle, the committee constituted under the provisions of the said Act has to come to a conclusion that the charges framed by it are substantial at the conclusion of a proper process of quasi-judicial inquiry and fact-finding. In such a scenario, the motion for removal has to go before both the Houses of Parliament where it has to be passed by a majority of the members of both Houses and a two-third majority of the members present and voting. In the unlikely scenario that the motion contemplated by the opposition is approved by the committee, it shall surely be defeated on the floor of the House.
There are only about six more months left in the tenure of the present Chief Justice of India and there is always the likelihood that the motion might end up being rendered infructuous before the same reaches any conclusion whatsoever. The next question to be asked is, whether any political benefit is likely to accrue to the opposition if they were to take this step irrespective of the chances of its success. The answer to this question too, unfortunately for the opposition, is in the negative.
The biggest case that is being heard before the Chief Justice of India today is related to the Ram Janma bhoomi issue. Despite the protestations of the Congress party to the contrary, the presence of Kapil Sibal as an arguing counsel for the Sunni Waqf Board has given rise to an impression in the minds of the public that the Congress does not want the Ram Temple to be built on the disputed site at all. If they do give in to the ‘secular’ fringe of their party and end up supporting the electorally bankrupt Left, it will also have serious detrimental implications for the newly minted ‘Hindu’ avatar of their leader, Rahul Gandhi.
Hence, leaders of India’s grand old party should ask themselves if they are willing to follow the lead of a party that has stopped using electoral victories as a measure of its success, for it has not notched up any significant ones in recent years.