Congress is out forum shopping, asserts Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley has called the decision of Congress MPs to withdraw their petition challenging Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu's order rejecting a removal motion against CJI Dipak Misra as admission of its attempts to "bowl on a friendly pitch".
Jaitley labelled the effort for a removal motion as "wholly misconceived" as it lacked substance and was just an attempt to fish in troubled waters. "If the motion for impeachment was unsustainable, the writ petition challenging the order of the chairman, Rajya Sabha, was unarguable," he said.

Defending Naidu's action in refusing to admit the motion, Jaitley said it was a "well-reasoned order". "The rulings of the chair on whether to admit a motion or otherwise, are not subject to judicial review," he added.

Claiming Congress is forum shopping, he said the party had "conceived of a strategy to choose a court of its choice for mentioning for constitution of the bench to hear the matter so that an unarguable matter could be arguable before a more receptive court".

"The judgment in the unfortunate death of Judge Loya has already exposed the false hallucination (sic) of the Congress party where it concocted the unnatural death theory. It now wanted a continuing sword to hang on the Chief Justice and hence on the Apex Court," Jaitley said in his blog.

The finance minister said Congress's repeated miscalculations are pushing it to the fringe both electorally and on crucial mainstream issues. "Fringe organisations have no hope of ever coming to power. They can, therefore, afford to take positions which they will never have to implement."