The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the decks for Parliament to proceed with the impeachment of Justice Yashwant Varma over the recovery of burnt wads of cash from his official Delhi residence.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma said there was no procedural irregularity in Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla admitting a notice of motion for the Allahabad High Court judge’s impeachment.
Justice Varma had challenged the Speaker’s decision to constitute a probe committee based on a notice of motion given to him on July 21 last year by 100 Lok Sabha members, despite a similar notice being served on the same day by 50 Rajya Sabha members to then Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar.
In the petition before the apex court, Justice Varma identified himself as “X”. The judgment also did not mention the judge’s name.
Justice Varma had contended that under Section 3 of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, when the notice of motion is given to both Houses on the same day, a joint committee ought to have been constituted by the Speaker and Chairperson together. However, in his case, the Speaker unilaterally constituted a panel without taking the Chairman into confidence.
“There is nothing in the Inquiry Act to suggest that rejection of a motion in one House would render the other House incompetent to proceed in accordance with law. The argument, therefore, lacks any legal foundation. The interpretation advanced by the petitioner of rejection of a notice in one House resulting in the notice automatically failing in the other House would entail consequences of a most serious nature. The members would be put to square one and the process has to be initiated afresh in either House. Had Parliament intended such far-reaching consequences, it would have articulated the first proviso in clear and unambiguous terms. The absence of any express provision to that effect is, in our opinion, determinative,” the apex court bench said in its judgment.
It said accepting Justice Varma’s argument would produce absurd results where the individual capacity of one House in initiating a motion under Article 124(4) would become contingent upon the outcome in the other House, even at the stage of admission of such a motion.
“Taking away the autonomy of one of the two Houses of Parliament could not have been the intent behind the first proviso. Such an interpretation must also be rejected on the ground that it renders the first proviso open to abuse. It would permit a situation where, upon getting the wind of a notice of motion being given for removal of a judge with a real likelihood of the same being admitted by the presiding officer of one House, certain members of the other House not inclined to have the process of removal initiated against the judge may deliberately give a defective notice on the same day, solely with the intention of scuttling the proceedings,” it added.
Justice Varma was repatriated from Delhi High Court to Allahabad High Court after burnt wads of currency notes were found at his official residence in New Delhi on March 14.
The then Chief Justice of India, Sanjiv Khanna, had initiated an in-house inquiry and constituted a three-member committee, which submitted its report on May 4, finding Justice Varma guilty of misconduct.