The Congress party along with the opposition on Friday handed over a notice for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. More than 60 MPs who signed the notice comprising of seven political parties including the Congress, NCP, SP, CPI-M and the BSP.
As per Rajya Sabha’s leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, the impeachment lists out five grounds of misbehaviour by the CJI and has been backed by the article 217 and article 124(4) of the constitution.
This Congress-led impeachment notice though hasn’t been without controversy. Soon after the announcement a Times Now report claimed that the notice was opposed by six Congress leaders including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
As per the report, the Congress party was divided in this regards and was split into two factions with regards to their views over the impeachment motion. While planning in this regard, the party had supposedly sought the opinion of its top legal minds and the report claimed senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi expressed his disapproval in writing.
The report further claimed that other senior leaders including Veerappa Moily, Manish Tewari and P Chidambaram backed Singhvi in this matter. Over former PM Manmohan Singh, the report claimed that he too was against the said motion.
Following such reports, the Congress party seems to have entered into a firefighting mode, via a press conference by senior party leader Kapil Sibal. With regards to Manmohan Singh, Sibal claimed that the party had chosen not to involve him in this matter, due to him being the former PM.
These reports too were prima facie contradicted to a certain extent by an ANI report which quoted Sibal as saying that it was “completely false that Manmohan Singh did not sign the impeachment motion against the CJI”.
