Impeachment 'politics' & motion against Justice Varma at heart of Dhankhar's exit as Vice President?

New Delhi: The decision to initiate a Opposition-sponsored impeachment notice against Justice Yashwant Varma, which is perceived to have led to Jagdeep Dhankhar’s resignation as Vice President, came at a meeting of Congress Parliamentary Strategy Group last week, sources said.

It was arrived at as leaders felt that it should not allow the ruling BJP to run away with the credit in the fight against corruption. The leaders were apprised of the ruling BJP’s plans to initiate the motion in Lok Sabha and corner credit, sources claimed.

The buzz is that Dhankhar receiving the impeachment notice against Justice Varma from the Opposition took the government by surprise and subsequent developments led to the Vice President’s resignation. With Dhankhar’s action, Rajya Sabha also got involved with the impeachment process while the government wanted it to be initiated in Lok Sabha.

Sources said the Congress started collecting signatures soon after for the three-page notice that was extensively quoted from the in-house inquiry ordered by then Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna. The notice provided the details of sequence of events, grounds for removal, breach of public trust and probity and recommendation for removal.

The notice said the portions of the in-house report “proved misbehaviour” and requested that it be admitted, a statutory committee be set up to conduct an inquiry into the incident involving Justice Varma and the House acts in accordance with the Constitution if the probe upholds the charges, they said.

Congress sources claimed that Dhankhar had examined another notice to impeach Justice Shekhar Yadav submitted by the Opposition and had got authentication of signatures of at least 51 signatures. They said Dhankhar even got the authentication of a Congress MP on Monday.

Sources said the party thought about how to blunt the BJP campaign and decided to submit the notice against Justice Varma on Monday besides stepping up pressure on the notice against Justice Yadav.

A senior Opposition leader met Dhankhar at 5 pm on Monday where he broached about the notice against Justice Yadav. Dhankhar is learnt to have told the leader in the presence of an official to wait for his announcement on Tuesday, sources said.