Is CPM party planning for an impeachment motion in parliament against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra? Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters that CPI(M) considering motion to remove Chief Justice Dipak Misra and they seem to be eyeing upcoming budget sessions for this. It is known news that the four judges on January 12 alleged that the administration of the Supreme Court was not in order and accused Justice Misra of assigning cases in an arbitrary manner. CPM and Yechuri opine, the issue is still not resolved and he told ““In this situation, there is no other option but to correct this institution (the Supreme Court) in case there is anything wrong. This can be done by an impeachment motion against the Chief Justice.”
However, once appointed, Supreme court judge can not be removed by President or Prime minister or any other authority. Even Chief justice of India can not remove other judges. To remove any judge, they have to go through a long impeachment process as laid down by the constitution of India.
It is a complicated process and needs to follow below steps:
- 50 members of Rajya Sabha or 100 members of the Lok Sabha need to sign the motion to initiate the process
- Issue has to be addressed in both Lok sabha and Rajyasabha
- Motion introduced should pass in each house separately not with simple majority(more than 50%) but with special majority (more than 2/3 members present should vote in favour of motion)
- Also, more than 50% of total strength of each house should vote in favor of the motion. For example, Lok sabha has 544 MPs. Let’s say, on the day of voting only 300 MPs attend and 2/3 of it is 200. But motion is not considered passed in such case, as 50% of the total strength of house i.e. 273 MPs have not voted in favour of the motion.
- Once it passes with 2/3 of majority of members present and more than 50% of strength of both houses, it will go for president’s assent
- In addition to all above, the Chief justice can be impeached only on the ground of proven misbehaviour or incapacity.
By seeing current strengths of opposition parties and current trends, it looks like even if such impeachment motion is introduced it is impossible to be passed. Moreover, though CPM is contemplating such impeachment it is not clear yet whether congress will support such process, given the fact that CPM doesn’t want to ally with congress in 2019 elections. So, initiating the impeachment process itself seems very difficult, forget about passing the motion.
V. Ramaswami was the judge of the Supreme Court of India and the first judge against whom removal proceedings were initiated in independent India in early 90s and that motion failed to pass the parliament. So far no Supreme court judge removed through this process. However, Justice “Soumitra Sen” of Calcutta High Court, Chief Justice Dinakaran of Sikkim High Court , proceedings against whom were initiated parliament, resigned before the motion came in front of the houses.
