Union Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said that the Congress’ “false hallucinations” in the case of the death of judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya had been exposed and accused the Opposition party of targeting the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra with an impeachment motion. “It [Congress] now wanted a continuing sword to hang on the chief justice and hence on the apex court,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.
“Congress Party’s latest misadventure against the judiciary has been the impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India was wholly misconceived,” he said, referring to the petition two Congress MPs had filed in the Supreme Court against Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu’s rejection of the impeachment motion. “It is poorly drafted and lacked in substance.”
Jaitley said the Congress had found a divided court to “fish in troubled waters”. “If the motion for impeachment was unsustainable, the writ petition challenging the order of the Chairman, Rajya Sabha, was unarguable,” he added.
The minister accused the Congress of coming up with a strategy to “choose a court of its choice for mentioning for constitution of the bench to hear the matter so that an unarguable matter could be arguable before a more receptive court”. The party “was looking for a friendly pitch to bowl on”, he added.
Former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee also criticised the Congress, saying the impeachment motion against Misra was misconceived. “Impeachment can be for proved misbehaviour not because certain judgement is rather not correct,” he told PTI.
On Tuesday, the two Congress MPs withdrew their petition after the Supreme Court refused to provide them with a copy of the administrative order on the formation of the five-judge Constitution bench that would have heard the plea.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan has filed a Right to Information petition seeking to know whether the petition was listed before the Constitution bench on Tuesday, reported Live Law. He also sought to know who passed the order and asked for a copy.
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