Monday, September 5, 2011

New Delhi, Sept. 4: Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar will consult leaders of political parties on Monday before taking a call on Justice Soumitra Sen's impeachment amid signals from the government that the motion was likely to be dropped after the President accepted his resignation.
A formal notification signed by the President reached the Speaker on Sunday.
"The entire impeachment process becomes infructuous since Soumitra Sen ceases to be a judge after his resignation was accepted by the President," a senior minister said.
Sources in the BJP concurred. However, the consultations the Speaker and leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee will hold with the Opposition are important because the Left appears to be in favour of going ahead with the impeachment proceedings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
The CPM's Basudeb Acharia said: "We are of the view that the opinion of the highest law officer, the attorney-general, should be taken on whether to proceed with the impeachment or drop it."
Attorney-general G.E. Vahanvati had said on Friday that the impeachment process should not be abandoned midway.


I wonder if Attorney-general G.E. Vahanvati would have given the same advice if the present judge being impeached was from Maharashtra.
Nothing is done on merit in India, politics is brought into everything.
We have seen how the Bengal members of the Rajya Sabha abstained from voting when Justice Soumitra Sen's impeachment was put to vote.
During the earlier impeachment of Justice V. Ramaswami, the members from Tamilnadu opposed his impeachment just because he was from Tamilnadu.
Former Chief Justice Balakrishnan had done sufficient misdemeanours to deserve impeachment but it was not taken up because he was from the scheduled caste and Mayawati opposed it.
In a way, it is good that David Headley was not brought to India for questioning and they kept him in the USA. We would never had got out of him what the USA has been able to get out of him.We would have made such a mess of it that he would have gone scot-free.
The way the demand for death sentences of criminals(murderers) are requested for being commuted by political parties according to the state he/she hails from, it would be better if they (those of the hangman's queue) are nominated to either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha.
At least , Afzal Beg who failed in his attempt to blow up parliament should be given another chance.

No comments: