The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has threatened Meghalaya High Court Justice SR Sen of impeachment for his 10 December remark on NRC and partition.
“The CPI(M) is of the opinion that Justice Sen has lost his moral right to continue in the office as a Judge of the High Court. The party will consult other parties in Parliament to consider moving an impeachment motion for his removal.” CPI(M) said in a statement.
They also have made a request to Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to oust Justice Sen from his designation. They alleged that Justice Sen’s ideology is akin to RSS and communal in nature. Party said that the judgment is also against the sanctity of the secular nature of the constitution.
After these developments, Justice SR Sen has issued a clarification regarding the judgment. He said the confusion is arising due to misinterpretation of his comments and added that he upholds the secular nature of the constitution. In a clarification issued on Saturday under the same case where he had issued the earlier judgement, he wrote that secularism is one of the basic features of the Indian Constitution and it should not further be divided on the basis of religion, caste, creed, community or language.
“I am not a religious fanatic rather I respect all the religions because to me God is one.” Read the clarification.
On 10 December Justice S R Sen in a judgment had said that India should also have been declared a Hindu country after partition like Pakistan chose to become an Islamic one. The judgment was regarding allotment of domicile certificate to an army recruit.
Justice SR Sen had requested the Prime Minister and other lawmakers to bring a law to allow the Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhist, Parsis, Christians, Khasis, Jaintias and Garos who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to live in this country peacefully and with full dignity. He had also urged the government to provide these groups with unconditional citizenship. Justice had also stated his discontent for ongoing NRC drive in Assam.
The judge noted that the ongoing process to update the NRC in Assam is “defective as many foreigners become Indians and original Indians are left out which is very sad.”
Justice had expressed confidence in present dispensation headed by Modi government, that it will do its best to safeguard interests of the Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhist, Christians, Parsis, Khasis, Jaintias and Garos. He had also cautioned against the transformation of Indian into an Islamic Nation. “I make it clear that nobody should try to make India as another Islamic country, otherwise it will be a doomsday for India and the world,” he wrote.
In the clarification issued, Justice Sen said that:
“I would like to make it clear that when I mentioned the government under Shri. Narendra Modiji it is inclusive of the Hon’ble Ministers and Hon’ble Members of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.” He further clarified that remark in judgment also mentioned about the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. He said that his appeal was to all lawmakers and legislators of the country.
The judgment had also mentioned that post-partition Hindus and Sikhs were affected the most. But, while Sikhs managed to rehabilitate, Hindus never got chance. He also had mentioned that while genocide of Jews and horrors of the Holocaust are widely documented and discussed, the plight of Hindus in East Pakistan did not get much attention.
Justice Sen said that he nowhere made remarks against secularism and said that he only cited historical facts, and one can never alter them.
In recent times, this is the second instance when a political party is trying to move impeachment against a sitting judge. In April, seven opposition parties submitted a petition seeking impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra to the Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. But, VP had rejected the motion citing lack of merit in it.
