It’s official, the Congress will not make the move for impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
The Congress, which had been collecting signatures of MPs, abandoned the move to impeach the chief justice, and the party’s leader Mallikarjun Kharge told Indian Express the issue is “closed now”.
Kharge told Indian Express, “For several things, those signatures can be taken… Many times, discussions during other things… but that is not the question. The question is (that) people have got angry about this judgment… atrocities [SC, ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act] and all this. And even the instructions going from PMO to a particular judge or a particular… such things are also heard. I don’t know the exact names and these things. Therefore, some people might have thought that it is better to give certain… but anyway that issue is closed now.”
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The CPI(M) had first floated the idea of impeachment after four senior judges of the apex court went public against the chief justice over “arbitrary” allocation of sensitive PILs to certain judges, after their initial letter didn’t elicit action. The Congress shed their initial reluctance and joined hands with CPI(M) and NCP to collect signatures to impeach Misra.
But the lack of broader consensus inside the party and among opposition parties -- with the DMK and TMC sitting on the fence – the Congress was forced to back off despite it getting 60 signatures.
To move an impeachment motion against the CJI, signatures of 100 MPs are needed in Lok Sabha, and in Rajya Sabha signatures of 50 members are required.
