Removal notice against CEC Gyanesh Kumar: Opposition says rejecting motion at this stage undermined Constitutional process

New Delhi: Opposition on Wednesday found fault with the orders by the presiding officers of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha rejecting its notices seeking removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, saying it amounted to a “mini-trial” and one which mixed up the concept of sub-judice and contempt with impeachment.

At a joint press conference of Opposition leaders, senior Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi alleged that the decision to reject the notice at a preliminary stage undermined Constitutional processes, weakened accountability in a democracy and amounted to "strangulating" the entire impeachment mechanism envisaged in the Constitution.

"When accountability is adjourned intelligently, then democracy itself stands impeached. If the truth was on the CEC's side, why there was a fear in facing the scrutiny...why try and bury the notice," Singhvi, who was accompanied by Trinamool Congress leaders Derek O'Brien and Sagarika Ghose, RJD's Manoj K Jha, AAP's Sandeep Pathak, DMK's Yogesh and NCP(SP)'s Rajeev Jha, said.

He claimed that there were many fundamental errors in the "virtually identical" orders issued by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan, as the Constitution provides for a procedure involving an initial admission, the formation of a judicial committee, framing of charges, the submission of a report, parliamentary discussion and a President order.

"By rejecting the motion at the very first stage, you effectively eliminate all subsequent stages, including scrutiny by an independent committee and Parliament's collective wisdom," he said, adding that the orders had noted that notice had crossed the procedural part as it was fulfilled.

Claiming that the presiding officers exceeded the scope of a prima-facie assessment by delving into the merits of the allegations, he said, "you cannot conduct a mini trial at the threshold. That defeats the very architecture of the Constitution...The entire process has been reduced to the decision of one person, eliminating accountability. That was never the intent of the Constitution's framers."

Citing a Supreme Court judgement on the impeachment notice on Justice Yashwant Varma, the Congress leader said the orders were "significantly silent" on consultation process as envisaged by the apex court.

He said the presiding officers have wrongly mixed up sub-judice and contempt proceedings with impeachment. "If the SIR will go on for three years and 20 other people file complaints, is it that the Parliament cannot impeach him?" he said, while asking whether the sovereignty and integrity of a separate Constitutional procedure need to be subjected to or subordinated to court proceedings.

"You have done a mini-trial, you have strangulated the adjudication in the political process, you have mixed up subjudice, contempt and impeachment," he added.