We filed petition in SC (challenging VP Naidu’s dismissal of impeachment motion against CJI) yesterday & was to be heard today. But we were informed last evening that our petition will be heard by 5 judges. Who gave these orders? What were orders?: Kapil Sibal, Congress to Press

— Legal Desire (@legaldesire) May 8, 2018

Here’s copy of Petition: 

Attorney General KK Venugopal has questioned the maintainability of the petition. “Why have only two Congress MPs come? I will presume only the Congress is aggrieved. Other six parties have accepted (Rajya Sabha Chairman) Venkaiah Naidu’s decision,” he says.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan says it’s unfortunate that the court even refused to share a copy of the administrative order by which the five-judge Constitution Bench was formed to hear the matter. “It has never happened that a writ petition has been brought to a Constitution Bench before a judicial order is passed.”

Sibal, who is also one of the signatories of the impeachment notice, had on Monday mentioned the petition for urgent listing before a bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar. The bench, also comprising Justice SK Kaul, asked Sibal and advocate Prashant Bhushan to mention the matter before the CJI for urgent listing, citing a Constitution bench judgment on powers of master of roster.

Overnight, a five-judge constitution bench in the Supreme Court was constituted by the CJI on Monday to hear the matter on Tuesday. The list of business for the Supreme Court showed that the petition would be heard on Tuesday by a bench comprising Justices AK Sikri, SA Bobde, NV Ramana, Arun Mishra and AK Goel.

Significantly, the matter was not listed before the judges who are number two to five in the seniority—Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph—who had held a press conference on January 12 in which they had raised concerns about the independence of the judiciary.

On Tuesday, the the five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice AK Sikri did not agree to Sibal’s plea for a copy of the administrative order which led to the bench being set up on Monday, and asked Sibal to argue the main matter challenging Naidu’s order on merits. Sibal argued that the matter could be referred to a Constitution Bench only by a judicial order, and wondered how could it be done by an administrative order, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel asked if there was a bar on directly referring the matter to a five-judge bench by the latter process.

“You (want) to challenge that (administrative order setting up five-judge bench) for what outcome?” Justice Sikri asked Sibal, who told the bench: “You must say who passed the order. I must have the copy of the order so that I can challenge it.”

The bench reminded Sibal that at the outset of the hearing he had said that he has no personal agenda and was for upholding the dignity of the court. “Will the dignity of the court be jeopardised if you give me that (administrative) order (constituting five judge bench). It is not a secret document under the National Security Act,” Sibal countered.

In the petition, the two MPs claimed that the reasons given were “wholly extraneous” and not legally tenable. While Justice Chelameswar had initially asked him to mention the matter before the CJI, the bench, also comprising Justice SK Kaul, later asked Sibal and Bhushan to “come back tomorrow”. Justice Chelameswar also said he was on the verge of retirement. Making his submissions, Sibal said Naidu cannot summarily reject the notice bearing signatures of 64 MPs and seven former members who had recently retired, on the ground that there was “no proved misbehaviour”.The bench asked Sibal and Bhushan to mention the matter before the Chief Justice of India for urgent listing, citing a Constitution Bench judgment on the powers of master of roster.

Earlier, Vice President rejected the Impeachment Plea in Rajya Sabha.

Naidu said, “I have applied my mind to all five charges made out in Impeachment Motion and examined all annexed documents. All facts as stated in motion don’t make out a case which can lead any reasonable mind to conclude that CJI on these facts can be ever held guilty of misbehaviour.”

“After having perused annexures to the Motion and having detailed consultations and having studied opinions of constitutional experts I am satisfied that admission of this notice of Impeachment Motion is neither desirable nor proper,” he said.

The Vice President had consulted Attorney-General KK Venugopal, former law officer K Parasaran, retired Supreme Court judge Sudarshan Reddy, former Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha Subhash Kashyap, former Law Secretary PK Malhotra and former Legislative Secretary of the Rajya Sabha Sanjay Singh while deciding on the impeachment motion, said news reports.

On April 20, the opposition parties led by Congress moved the impeachment motion in the Rajya Sabha, seeking the removal of CJI Misra under Article 217 read with article 124 (4) of the Constitution of India. The motion was signed by 64 sitting members of the House.

As per Article 124 (4), “A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.”

The post CJI Impeachment Row: Petition withdrawn by Congress after SC refuses to give details of order forming Bench (Read Petition) appeared first on Legal Desire Media and Insights.

Few eminent lawyers who turned politicians and helped their political party to gain success and excel is structuring policies.

Subramanium Swamy

Son to Sitaraman Subramanian, a bureaucrat and Padmavathy a homemaker was not a lawyer by education. He has completed his doctorate degree in Economics from Harvard University and still teaches every summer session at Harvard two courses in Economics, one on mathematical methods, and another on China.  He entered politics in 1970 and stirred the national polictics by challenging Indira Gandhi’s Soviet influenced socialist planning. He has fought over 75 cases till now and he learned the nuances of law from eminent lawyers and now belongs to the elite group of lawyers.

Salman Khurshid

He is a senior advocate, eminent author and a law teacher. Salman Khurshid belongs to Indian National Congress. He started his political career in 1981 as an Officer on Special Duty in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under the prime ministership of Indira Gandhi. In 2011, he was made Cabinet Minister for Law and Justice, and Minority Affairs in the Government of India. Sons of Babur, a play written by Salman Khurshid, has received widespread acknowledgement and has also been translated into several languages.

Arun Jaitley

A senior advocate of Delhi High Court who is presently the Finance Minister and Minister of Corporate Affairs of NDA led BJP government. He graduated in Commerce from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi in 1973. He passed his Law degree from the University of Delhi, in 1977. He was an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student leader in the Delhi University Campus in the seventies and rose to be the President of the Students Union of Delhi University in 1974. Jaitley has always emerged as a strategic planner of the BJP, helping his party member Narendra Modi wins the assembly election in 2002. As the General Secretary, he managed eight assembly elections, which proved victorious for the BJP. He was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 2012 for his third term.

Palaniappan Chidambaram

Chidambaram is a corporate lawyer who started his career with practice at the Madras High Court. By 1984 he was a senior advocate. His offices were in Chennai and Delhi. Eventually he became a practicing lawyer in the Supreme Court and other High Courts in India. P. Chidambaram is a highly qualified person. He is a member of one of thelargest and oldest national party of India, the Indian National Congress. The last two terms of the UPA government, led by the Indian National Congress party, have seen P. Chidambaram holding many important positions.

Prashant Bhushan

A prominent member of Anna Hazare’s campaign and later became one of the co-founder of Aam Adami Party in 2012. In April, 2105 after the Delhi elections, he was voted out from AAP and formed a new political movement called Swaraj Abhiyan. He was enrolled to study engineering at IIT-Madras but quit after one semester and decided to do a two-year BSc programme with Philosophy, Economics and Political Science in Allahabad. During this period Mrs. Gandhi’s election case was taking place, and attended the hearings both in Allahabad and the Supreme Court and knew that he is only seeing a small part of Law because this was a high profile case. These incidents made him to study law for next three years and enrolled himself as an advocate in 1983. And presently, he is noted for his use of public interest litigation (PIL) to support a number of causes related to corruption, environmental protection and human rights.

Kapil Sibal

He is an Indian lawyer, politician, and government official who became a senior leader in the Indian National Congress (Congress Party). He was especially noted for his service as a cabinet minister in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government (2004–14). He studied in St. Stephens College, University of Delhi, then completed his degree in law from Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and did MA in history as well. He joined the bar association in 1970. Afterwards, he attended the Harvard Law School where he enrolled for an LL.M. which he completed in 1977.^] He was designated as senior lawyer in 1983. In 1989, he was appointed the Additional Solicitor General of India. In 1994, he was the only lawyer to appear in the Parliament, and successfully defended a Supreme Court judge during impeachment proceedings.

These are few names who had studied law and came into politics, but this isn’t new for any democracy around the world. India before Independence had Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallahbhai Patel who were lawyers and helped India to achieve Independence as well shaped the political scenario. This can be evidently seen in American democracy where many presidents had background of legal education. We see many lawyers being the part of political movement because they are trained to be leaders who have wide perspectives of understanding people’s outcry and mould the regulations within the legal limits to help the people of the nation.

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