Just days after Vice President Venkaiah Naidu rejected Congress-led opposition parties’ impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India, a 5-judge bench has now been set up to hear a challenge against this rejection.
These developments cropped up after Congress leader and senior advocate Kapil Sibal, along with Prashant Bhushan, mentioned the matter before Justice Chelameshwar, who is the senior-most Supreme Court judge after Chief Justice Misra.
Sibal and Bhushan argued that the Vice President has no authority to summarily rejected an impeachment motion signed by an adequate number of MPs. Justice Chelameshwar refused to take up the matter immediately and asked the two lawyers to appear the next day. He cited a recent judgement which says that the Chief Justice is the master of the roster and possesses powers to decide which bench should hear which matter.
Meanwhile, CJI Misra’s office declared today that a five-judge Constitution bench will hear this matter henceforth and arrive at a conclusion. This bench will be headed by Justice AK Sikri and also comprises of Justices SA Bobde, NV Ramana, Arun Mishra and AK Goel.
BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi and party leader Aman Sinha, both Supreme Court advocates themselves, hit out at the Congress party for dragging the apex court into politics and said there are no legal grounds to support Kapil Sibal’s contentions. Other BJP leaders also firmly backed Vice President Naidu over this issue.