November 21, 2024

After asking for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of India based on innuendos and insinuations full of “may be”, the Congress has the gall to ask Justice Dipak Misra to step back from handling judicial and administrative work till the motion is disposed of. Justice Misra should not agree to do that for the simple reason that the impeachment motion against him is politically motivated and does not stand an iota of a chance of succeeding. The Congress knows that such things take time and Justice Misra is due to retire on October 2, till which time the motion is unlikely to be disposed of. Hence, it is tricking him into a forced early retirement. Justice Misra should never accede to this demand, talks of “appeal to his conscience” notwithstanding, as this motion is nothing but an ugly attempt to undermine the judiciary and settle political scores.

Further, the impeachment motion is being piloted by a party that has a history of undermining the judiciary and appointing ‘pliant’ judges to the bench. It is known to all how Justice A N Ray was elevated as CJI by superseding three judges senior to him – Justices J M Shelat, K S Hegde and A N Grover. Otherwise too, the history of Congress-ruled governments is full of putting their “own” people on the benches and then rewarding them with plum posts or making them head of this or that commission where “favourable” reports were needed.

Hence, when Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala says that “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion” and that is why “we have left it to his conscience” for stepping back from judicial and administrative work, it sounds hollow, even comical. Before leaving it to the CJI’s conscience, the Congress party should examine its own conscience and discover whether after all that it has done to undermine the judiciary in long years of rule, does it qualify to bring in the impeachment motion against the CJI and that too on trivial grounds? For, in this case, Caesar’s wife is definitely the Congress party and it is certainly not above suspicion. Without doubt, the impeachment motion is politically motivated.