Ever since the Congress top brass took the controversial and rather hilarious step of initiating a process of impeachment against the incumbent Chief Justice of India, Justice Dipak Misra, the party is being subjected to more ridicule than support. Needless to say, once the motion was outright rejected for its absurdity by the Chairman of Rajya Sabha and the incumbent Vice President, Shri Venkaiah Naidu, the Congress, miffed by the decision, has decided to approach the Supreme Court to challenge the decision.
Irritated by the day to day antics of the main opposition party, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took the ‘lawyer MPs’ of Congress to the cleaners for the impeachment row, calling the move to approach Supreme Court ‘a suicidal one’ in a scathing post on his Facebook profile.
Arun Jaitley defended the decision of Venkaiah Naidu, who rejected the impeachment motion, by reminding the Congress of the Chairman’s discretionary powers. According to him, “………..the Chairman has the sole discretion whether to admit the motion or decline it. The power to admit or to decline a motion is part of the legislative process of parliament…
…….The Parliament is supreme in its own jurisdiction. Its process cannot be subjected to judicial review.”
However, Arun Jaitley didn’t just stop at that. He took the Congress top brass to the cleaners for such an absurd move which could harm the independence of the judiciary. In his words, “object of the notice was not the passage of the motion but intimidation of India’s judiciary.”
He wouldn’t be far from the truth, since the Supreme Court has served back to back judgments, be it on Justice Loya’s death, or on the arbitrary diktat of not allowing the chanting of mantras throughout the premises of the holy Amarnath yatra by the National Green Tribunal, apart from initiating proceedings for a review on the regressive practices of Nikah Halala and polygamy, which would certainly not go down well with Congress, a party long notorious for their blatant corruption and excessive minority appeasement even at the cost of the national security.
Shri Arun Jaitley also revealed the main motive behind this motion which is certainly what defines the working style of the Congress party. To quote him,
“………….The Congress party is capable of dragging the judges into an unsavoury controversy and makes them controversial, should their judicial opinion not appear favorable in the cases in which the party has an interest. To any political analyst, it was clear that the impeachment motion would never get support of two-third majority in both Houses of Parliament. The Congress party knew this. Its object was not the passage of the motion but intimidation of India’s judiciary.”
This is not something new to Congress party. Who can forget the way lawyer MPs like Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi tried to manipulate the government machinery as well as the judiciary to an extent, just to please their masters from 10, Janpath road. None can forget the way such people tried to muzzle freedom of speech and expression through draconian laws like Section 66A of the IT act and how can we forget the way they tried to shield radical Islamic terrorism by manufacturing the hoax of ‘Saffron Terror’?
George Orwell once rightly said, ‘In the times of lie and deceit, telling of truth is in itself the most revolutionary act.’ We know that truth hurts, and so does Arun Jaitley. Those who have dared to mess with him know how bad the end would be. If the Congress party still has some sense left, they should stop this muck raking and end their futile pursuit of impeaching the judge, or else they might succumb to the very Frankenstein they have created in the name of sustaining power.