The Congress party has initiated the process to impeach Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, with support from Left parties and the NCP, according to reports.
A draft on the impeachment motion against the CJI has been signed by Congress leaders like Kapil Sibal, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and others, NCP leader Majeed Memon told the Times Now.
"A lot of opposition parties have signed a draft proposal for moving an impeachment motion against CJI Dipak Misra. Many parties like NCP, Left, and I think the TMC and the Congress also have signed it," DP Tripathi from the NCP told news agency ANI. Signatures of at least 50 MPs are required for impeachment.
The draft proposal reportedly deems "abuse of authority to arbitrarily assign individual cases to select judges" as grounds for moving the impeachment motion against CJI Dipak Misra.
According to a recent reportby the Economic Times, opposition parties are mulling to bring an impeachment notice against the CJI over his 'failure' to address issues raised by four senior-most Supreme Court judges over the functioning of the top body in an unprecedented press conference on January 12. Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph had attacked the CJI on the issue of allocation of sensitive and important PILs in the apex court in the Press Conference. This included the bench allotted by the CJI in hearing the Judge Loya death case.
The first issue in the draft, however, is the case of Prasad Education Trust wherein involvement of the CJI is alleged, reported the Bar and Bench quoting sources.
A medical college run by Prasad Education Trust allegedly collaborated with former Orissa High Court judge IM Quddusi who used his influence to 'settle' a matter involving their plea to set up medical colleges pending in the Supreme Court.
The Trust owned one of the 46 medical colleges barred by the central government from admitting students. The accused were subsequently granted bail, but the same was not challenged by CBI.
SC lawyer Prashant Bhushan had demanded the CJI recuse himself from hearing the case. However, he clarified that he was not alleging that the CJI was involved in the conspiracy and said that a thorough investigation was required in it.
Dismissing their plea in November last year, the CJI's bench had said the Chief Justice was "the master of roster" and had the prerogative to allocate matters before any bench.
(Inputs from agencies)