#Impeachment: The five charges levelled against Chief Justice Dipak Misra

Earlier today, seven opposition parties announced that they had cleared the first hurdle of obtaining the requisite number of signatures to move an impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra in the Rajya Sabha.

The draft motion for impeachment focuses on five charges as grounds for removal of Justice Misra for judicial misconduct.

The first three charges point towards the controversial sequence of events in the medical bribery case i.e. the Prasad Educational Trust case.

Two petitions were filed in the matter involving the alleged bribery of judges for the sanction of new medical colleges. However, following a dramatic chain of events, both petitions were ultimately dismissed by the Supreme Court last year.

The primary grievance is that Justice Misra did not abstain from involving himself in the conduct of the case, despite allegations that he may also have been involved in the charges levelled therein.

The first three charges have been presented as follows,

1. The facts and circumstances relating to the Prasad Educational Trust case, show prima facie evidence suggesting that Chief Justice Dipak Misra may have been involved in the conspiracy of paying illegal gratification in the case, which at least warrants a thorough investigation.
2. That the Chief Justice Dipak Misra dealt on the administrative as well as judicial side, with a writ petition which sought investigation into a matter in which he too was likely to fall within the scope of investigation since he had presided over every bench which had dealt with the case and passed orders in the case of Prasad Educational Trust, and thus violated the first principle of the Code of Conduct for Judges.
3. That the Chief Justice Dipak Misra appears to have antedated an administrative order dated 6^thNovember 2017 which amounts to a serious act of forgery/fabrication.

The note referred to in the third charge was annexed to an order passed in the matter by a Bench headed by Justice Jasti Chelameswar on November 9, 2017.

On the said date, Kamini Jaiswal’s petition in the Prasad Educational Trust case was urgently mentioned and listed to be heard before Court 2 headed by Justice Chelameswar. At the time, the Chief Justice was hearing regular matters in Court 1. At around 12 pm however, Chief Justice Misra rose from his Bench.

The annexed note, issued by the Registry, directed that urgent mentioning (as with Kamini Jaiswal’s petition) had to be brought to the notice of the Chief Justice.

It has been alleged that the said administrative note may have been prepared between 12 pm and 2 pm on November 9 by the Chief Justice and thereafter, antedated.

The fourth charge against Misra J. is regarding the delay in surrendering land that may have been acquired by him fraudulently, before his elevation to the Bench.

4. That Chief Justice Dipak Misra acquired land when he was an advocate, by giving an affidavit that was found to be false and despite the orders of the ADM cancelling the allotment in 1985, surrendered the said land only in 2012 after he was elevated to the Supreme Court.

Finally, the fifth charge echoes concerns raised in the Four Judges Press Conference, concerning improprieties in the administrative allocation of cases by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

The four judges had confined their objection to the Chief Justice acting against convention in the allocation of cases. However, the impeachment motion takes this concern a step further to contend that Justice Misra has abused his position as the master of the roster to arbitrarily assign individual cases.

5. That Chief Justice Dipak Misra has abused his administrative authority as master of roster to arbitrarily assign individual cases of particular advocates in politically sensitive cases, to select judges in order to achieve a predetermined outcome.

Some opine that the charges outlined in the impeachment motion are not strong enough grounds to see it through. Moreover, a notice of motion to impeach is only the first in a series of procedural hurdles that form part of the rigorous laws that deal with removal of judges in India.

Nevertheless, whether or not the attempt will find success, Justice Dipak Misra now has the dubious distinction of being the first Chief Justice of India to have removal proceedings initiated against him.