Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday cut short his visit to Hyderabad and returned to the national Capital. PTI Photo(PTI4_18_2018_000035B) New Delhi: Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday cut short his visit to Hyderabad and returned to the national Capital. It is understood that he wishes to set in motion the process of consultations on the impeachment notice filed against the Chief Justice of India by the Opposition.
As a part of this exercise, he will be having talks with constitutional and legal experts. He has already spoken to former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash Kashyap, ex-law secretary P K Malhotra and former legislative secretary Sanjay Singh. He has also held deliberations with senior officials of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, and is also likely to meet former Supreme Court judge Sudarshan Reddy.
All eyes are now on Naidu: he alone can alone decide whether the notice is to be accepted or rejected. The Congress is hoping that he will feel obliged to accept the motion and appoint at least a committee of inquiry. But if he does not, the party intends to move the Supreme Court. Days after the notice was served, the Congress said CJI Misra should consider recusing himself from discharging judicial and administrative work till he was cleared of allegations of misconduct.
The Congress also attacked the BJP for coming out in “defence” of the CJI and said the ruling party was compromising the position and office of the chief justice as neutral arbitrator and head of the judiciary. While reviewing the notice, Rajya Sabha officials have mentioned that making public the contents of a notice before it is admitted by the Chair is in violation of parliamentary rules. According to the provisions in the handbook for Rajya Sabha members, no advance publicity should be given to any notice to be taken up in the House till it is admitted by the chairman.