Two Congress Rajya Sabha MPs, Pratap Singh Bajwa and Amee Harshadray Yajnik on Monday (May 7) approached the Supreme Court via senior counsel Kapil Sibal, challenging Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu’s decision to reject the Congress-led move to impeach Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.

The appeal says that the Vice-President’s decision was “illegal and arbitrary”.

The petition says: “None of the reasons given by the Chairman (Venkaiah Naidu)… carry any weight or are legally tenable. It deserves to be set aside for being wholly extraneous and ultra vires to the provisions of the constitution and the Inquiry Act.”

The argument in the petition is that once the impeachment motion is initiated, signed by the requisite number of MPs, the Vice-President has no option but to constitute an inquiry committee to investigate the allegations. While the requisite as per law is an appeal signed by 50 MPs, the petition had names of 64 MPs.

On Monday, though, the writ filed by Sibal came up against an expected problem. At court No. 2 Justice Jasti Chelameswar, the second-most senior judge of the Supreme Court said that the master of the roster (the chief justice) has the authority to allot a matter. Sibal had said that this writ could not be mentioned anywhere else. Said Sibal: “I’m not asking for a relief, I’m just asking for a listing. If the chief justice is disabled, where do we go? I can’t go to CJI.”

Said Sibal to Chelameswar: “I have been in practice for 45 years. The procedure is simple/ Don’t depart from the procedure. If a matter cannot be mentioned before the CJI then it is supposed to be heard here.”

Justice Chelameswar asked Sibal to appear before him at 10.30am Tuesday.

—India Legal Bureau