New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday described ex-vice president Jagdeep Dhankhar’s ouster as a “political exit camouflaged as a constitutional lie”, as it accused the government of indulging in “petty politics” by not admitting the Opposition’s motion against Justice Yashwant Varma in Rajya Sabha.
Addressing a press conference, Congress senior spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi further alleged that the government was adopting “double standards” on the issue of judicial accountability by acting against Justice Varma, who is embroiled in a suspected corruption case, but ignoring the motion against Justice Shekhar Yadav of Allahabad High Court.
Last December, Opposition MPs moved an impeachment notice in Rajya Sabha against Justice Yadav for allegedly delivering a hate speech at a gathering.
Singhvi said the Congress is “very concerned” about the “selective outrage and selective silence” on the issue of two judges – Justice Varma and Justice Yadav.
“This is typical of BJP’s double standards and yet another example of BJP’s and the Modi Sarkar’s ‘theatre of the absurd’. The BJP’s game of motions is less about law and more about optics. A desperate dance to distract and dominate. And, how petty a dance to distract and dominate — Our house Lok Sabha first and not Rajya Sabha and out you go Mr Vice President.
“On judicial propriety, on anti-corruption movement and on judicial accountability, the BJP’s mantra is — ‘Talk the talk, never walk the talk, Keep talking the talk’. It is the worst example of doublespeak and hypocrisy on this entire episode,” he said.
On Dhankhar’s sudden resignation, Singhvi said, “It appears that Mr Dhankhar’s showing of some minimal independence possibly belatedly was his real mistake. No other mistake.”
“The best way to describe ex-vice president Dhankhar’s departure, a political exit camouflaged as a constitutional lie,” he alleged.
Singhvi also claimed that while creating this “confusion” on not taking up motions in both houses to jointly constitute a committee, the government is “either deliberately or at best unwittingly, giving an additional ground or excuse to the legal challenges which Justice Varma has mounted and is entitled to mount”.
“Why this confusion, why this unilateralism and division among MPs in two houses to possibly give Justice Varma a new ground of alleging procedural and substantive infirmities in creating the statutory committee of inquiry which is the most important act in his potential impeachment,” he claimed.
The Congress leader said one must also question both Dhankhar and the government, for their continuing eloquent silence on Justice Yadav, a person whose comments as a sitting judge, he alleged “read more like manifestos of a political party than any legal reasoning”.
He said this is not about one judge or two judges or about one vice president, but is about the very architecture of our democracy.
“When power intoxicates the ruling regime to the point where it is prepared to institutionally sabotage its own Vice President and its own Rajya Sabha Chairman, democracy is imperiled. And only democracy represented through the voice of its people can intervene.
“Is the BJP’s model of ‘one nation, one party’, is it so obsessive that it wants a say in judicial impeachment proceedings only in one house and is prepared to go to any extent for that,” the Congress leader alleged.
He claimed that the BJP and the Modi government have shown that today “no institution is safe – not Parliament, not the judiciary, not even the chair of the Upper House”.
“This is governance by dictatorship, governance by tantrum, governance not by law…Our opposition motion is not a coup, it is merely a constitutional pulse checking the heartbeat of democracy through the opposition,” he claimed.
The government Friday said Lok Sabha will take up a bipartisan motion to remove Justice Varma.
Singhvi recalled that on July 21, Congress and other parties moved a decisive constitutional motion in Rajya Sabha for various improprieties by Justice Varma and, in particular, for the creation of a statutory inquiry committee as required by the statute. This motion had the signatures of 63 Rajya Sabha members, it is cross party. Additionally, another motion had the signatures of 152 Lok Sabha members also cross-party, he said.
“The statement is crystal clear. Was Mr Dhankhar and the whole house watching a movie, were they watching a shadow boxing or dance, drama. When the Vice president was speaking, he was talking of a motion, physical thing in his hand and numerical requirement being satisfied,” he said, noting that it as as per the Act of Parliament that if there are two motions in the houses, then the two have to be both joined to form a statutory committee.
When the former chairman of Rajya Sabha asked the law minister whether the second motion had been moved in Lok Sabha, Meghwal replied in the affirmative. But yesterday, he said, a former Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, “was dispensing wisdom”, claiming that no motion had been admitted in Rajya Sabha at all.
Noting that the silence of both Dhankar and Rijiju for five days on the motion against Varma in Rajya Sabha is “most eloquent, most telling and has its own message”.
Singhvi claimed there is no doubt in anyone familiar with parliamentary affairs that Dhankhar intended to make the motion the property of the House that day and clearly proceed further with it in collaboration with Lok Sabha.
“Today, all this drama is being staged for what? The Modi government is insecure because it can’t control the narrative,” he noted.
“It shows many facets of this government, the way it works, the way it thinks and this ruling party…it ignores the clear cooperation, collegiality, the togetherness of both the houses intended by the proviso to section 3 of the act of Parliament,” he said.
“Here, this government and this ruling party’s talking of competition, a race as to who declares and announces first, was this the statutory intent,” Singhvi asked.
“Today, all this dance and drama is being done for what. so that your insecurity in not having control of the narrative is established. You are insecure. You are embarrassed? Why should the opposition in the Congress have a motion at all? Is that not petty, is that not childish, is that not silly,” he said.
Singhvi said the government’s concern should not be as to who has stolen the optics. “Think less of the limelight and more of constitutional principle, of democracy, of good governance rather than showing to the nation such cheap tactics.”
He also asked the government to adopt the multi-partisan spirit and not unilateralism.
“You have actually committed institutional sabotage and constitutional transgression by not following the spirit of the act of Parliament which should have involved the approbation in a motion of 800-odd MPs,” he said.
