Impeachment move plain bad politics

Impeachment move plain bad politics

Instead, work to create judicial accountability.

The five reasons cited by the Congress-led Opposition group that has moved to impeach the Chief Justice of India (CJI) do not add up to sufficient ground for impeachment. No impeachment motion has succeeded in the history of India’s Parliament, and the present government has the numbers to defeat the motion. So, the purpose of the motion can hardly be to remove the Chief Justice; rather, it must be seen as a political attack on the government, alleging attempt to influence the judiciary. What the Opposition can say in its defence is that so far, the Chief Justice has not addressed the concerns that drove his four senior-most brother judges to make a public complaint about the conduct of the court.

Two cited grounds for impeachment relate to Prasad Educational Trust case, about which a CBI inquiry is still on, although a bench chosen by the Supreme Court quashed a petition to order a special inquiry. How can impeachment precede investigation? The third and fourth reasons deal with, respectively, a seemingly unproven and minor allegation, and a land deal case that ended with the Chief Justice returning the plot of land in question. The fifth ground alleges that CJI has allocated cases to fellow judges with some ‘dastardly’ purpose in mind, abusing his master of the roster position. That presumes that certain justices are pliant, an allegation that should not be made if it cannot be proved. But as both Fali Nariman and Soli Sorabjee, two highly respected jurists, observed on Friday, CJI is indeed the master of the roster and his decisions on case allocation can never be grounds for impeachment merely because some people or even some judges disagree with his calls.

Instead of playing politics with the judiciary, the Opposition should work with the government to create a mechanism for judicial accountability, improving on the Judges Inquiry (Amendment) Bill 2008, that helps remove the tilt in the balance of power in favour of the judiciary effected by the court appropriating the right to appoint judges via the Second Judges Case, and sees impeachment as a terminal measure of last resort.