Cong using impeachment as ‘political tool’

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 20

A day after the Supreme Court dismissed petitions seeking an SIT probe into the death of Judge BH Loya, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took to Facebook on Friday to launch a scathing attack on the Congress, saying the 114-page judgment “exposes every fact of the conspiracy” to generate falsehood as propaganda in the public and political space.

This even as an internal letter by the BJP asking MPs to target Congress chief Rahul Gandhi demanding his apology on social platforms made its way to the social media.

The senior BJP leader accused the Congress of trivialising the power of impeachment and using it as a political tool. “Does this impeachment set a precedent that political parties in India will use impeachment as an instrument to intimidate judges hearing controversial matters? What has happened today is a price the Indian judiciary has to pay for misadventures of many,” he said.

Jaitley said Amit Shah (now BJP president) had no role in the Sohrabuddin case, which Loya was hearing, and it was an alleged encounter executed by some central agencies through the state police.

Referring to the judgment in the Loya case, Jaitley said never so blatantly in the past had national political parties, a few retired judges and some senior lawyers “so closely identified themselves with the generation of falsehood that they almost come out as conspirators”.

Regarding the move by the Congress and other Opposition parties to impeach Chief Justice of India Deepak Misra, Jaitley said: “The Congress Party and its friends have started using impeachment as a political tool.”

The move is an attempt to “intimidate” a judge and send a message to other judges “that if you don’t agree with us, fifty MPs are enough for a revenge action”, he added.