Congress was wrong to move impeachment notice against CJI, says Mamata Banerjee

NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress President and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said the Congress party was wrong to move impeachment notice against Chief Justice of India Deepak Misra. Seven opposition parties led by the Congress had last week moved a notice for impeachment against Chief Justice of India (CJI) on five grounds of "misbehaviour". "The Congress was wrong to give impeachment notice against the CJI. The Congress wanted us to support it. But we did not," PTI quoted Mamata as saying in an interaction with a news channel. "I told Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi not to go for impeachment," Banerjee said, adding that her party did not want to interfere in the judiciary. Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu rejected the notice saying it lacked substantial merit and that the allegations were neither "tenable nor admissible". Banerjee, who is seen as a key player in a possible grouping of non-BJP political parties ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections, termed the decision of Congress and other opposition parties of impeachment notice against the CJI as "wrong". A strident critic of the BJP-led central government and its policies, Banerjee had recently called for unity among all the anti-BJP forces to defeat the saffron party in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Earlier on Tuesday, Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu said his decision was "timely and not a hasty one" and came after over a month of due diligence. "Freedom of expression allows that but ultimately truth prevails. I have done the just thing in the best possible manner expected of me," PTI sources quoted Naidu as saying. The vice president said his decision was in strict conformity with the provisions of the Constitution and the Judges Inquiry Act of 1968. "I have done my job and am satisfied with it, Naidu was quoted as telling a group of 10 Supreme Court lawyers who met him to compliment him over the decision. The Rajya Sabha chairman's office is not a mere post office but a constitutional functionary," he said. Congress had alleged that Naidu rejected the impeachment notice without a full-fledged enquiry and said the Opposition will move Supreme Court against his decision. Reacting to that Naidu on Tuesday said that the chief justice of India is the highest judicial functionary of the country and "any issue in public domain concerning him requires to be resolved at the earliest following prescribed procedures so as to prevent the atmosphere from being further vitiated".