Amongst the mayhem created by the Congress party over CJI impeachment, came an unanticipated revelation by the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee. She said in an interview on Tuesday that, she had tried to discourage the Congress from moving the impeachment motion to remove the Chief Justice of India (CJI), arguing that the case for the opposition parties wasn’t strong enough.
पश्चिम बंगाल की सीएम ममता बनर्जी ने न्यूज 18 से खास बातचीत में मुख्य न्यायाधीश के खिलाफ महाभियोग प्रस्ताव लाए जाने के कांग्रेस के फैसले को गलत बताया. https://t.co/tixzhdbMkOpic.twitter.com/z6ShdMD9ED
— News18 India (@News18India) April 25, 2018
“The Congress was wrong to give impeachment notice against the CJI. The Congress wanted us to support it. But we did not,” she told News18 Bangla channel.
“I told Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi not to go for impeachment,” Banerjee said, adding that her party did not want to interfere in the Judiciary. She slammed the move as a wrong political step, for which her Trinamool Congress party had distanced itself, breaking rank with other opposition.
Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday had rejected the notice by seven Opposition parties, led by the Congress, to impeach the Chief Justice of India on five grounds of “misbehaviour”, saying the allegations were neither “tenable nor admissible”.
The ruling party, however, considers this move by the opposition an attempt to intimidate the Chief Justice of India and to tarnish the reputation of Bhartiya Janta Party. As per reports, Finance minister Arun Jaitley said an impeachment motion has to be filed in the rarest of rare cases where a “gross misconduct” has been indulged in by a delinquent judge during his tenure. “The present impeachment motion has been filed on untenable grounds. It has been filed for the collateral purpose to intimidate the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the highest judiciary.”
This comes at a time when Mamta Banerjee and the Congress party leaders have shared their animosity for the BJP. It will be intriguing to see the congress party’s reaction on this disclosure by Mamata.
