NEW DELHI: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday slammed the Congress for its “misconceived” move to back the impeachment notice against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Mishra, while accusing the Opposition party of having become a fringe player.
“The Congress’ impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India was wholly misconceived. It is poorly drafted and lacked in substance. Many of its traditional allies were not willing to take on this confrontation with the judicial institutions. Finding a divided court, the Congress wanted 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,” Jaitley stated in a blog.
The minister stated that the rejection of a notice by the Speaker or the Chairman was part of the legislative process. “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. But wanting to fish in troubled waters, the Congress 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,” noted Jaitley.
He added that the Congress was looking for a “friendly pitch to bowl on”.
Jaitley said the judgment in the “unfortunate death of Judge Loya has already exposed the false hallucination of the Congress where it concocted the unnatural death theory”.
Jaitley argued that after its efforts of “forum shopping” failed, the Congress refused to argue its unarguable case on merits.
“Does it behove a national party to deviate from the mainstream and take such fringe position? Fringe organisations have no hope of ever coming to power. They can, therefore, afford to take positions which they will never have to implement,” Jaitley stressed.
The Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha further argued that the fact that the Congress has been reduced to a two-digit party and is being ousted from state after state demonstrated the non-acceptability of its current leadership.
“The most alarming aspect of the Congress has been that from a grand old party which occupied centre-stage, it is being pushed to the fringe. It is not only electoral arithmetic that it occupies the fringe position but also the position that it adopts on several mainstream issues,” the minister wrote.