CJI impeachment plea: Supreme Court dismisses the petition as withdrawn

The Congress on Tuesday withdrew a petition from the Supreme Court challenging the Vice-President's decision to reject an impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra.

"We will withdraw the petition, " senior advocate Kapil Sibal told a five-judge bench led by justice AK Sikri after the bench refused to let him know who referred the issue to it on the administrative side.

Justice Sikri kept asking Sibal to argue the issue on merits. But Sibal was insistent on knowing whether it was the CJI, who had passed the administrative order referring it to the five-judge bench despite he being at the Centre of the case.

Sibal had mentioned the petition before the second senior most judge Justice Chelameswar yesterday in a bid to have the case listed before a bench not led by the CJI. By evening the CJI as the master of the roster had listed it before a bench of justices Sikri, SA Bobde, NV Ramana, Arun Misra and AK Goel.

In constituting this bench the CJI had significantly bypassed the next four senior most in the court hierarchy, who had gone public with their differences with CJI's style of listing sensitive cases before junior benches.

The four were not consulted, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan claimed on twitter.