Hearing a plea to restrain Parliamentarians from making statements on the impeachment motion in public, the Supreme Court on Monday said the Rajya Sabha Rules itself clearly prohibit lawmakers from doing so. The Court asked Attorney General to examine this aspect and suggest Government’s response to a 2005 law Commission report that proposed to make such utterances outside Parliament a criminal offence.
The Supreme Court would hear the matter in the third week of July. A bench comprising Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, while maintaining that there was no urgency in hearing the matter now, said, “We don’t have to frame any guideline.” It observed that the question was whether there should be such discussions outside Parliament. The bench was hearing a plea filed by an NGO ‘In Pursuit of Justice’ which sought laying down of guidelines or modalities regulating procedure to be followed by MPs, desirous of initiating proceedings for removal of a judge of the Supreme Court or a high court, prior to initiating a motion under Article 124(4) and (5) and 217(1)(b) of the Constitution. Article 124(4) and (5) deal with the procedure to be followed for removal of an apex court judge.
The petitioner has said the cause of action arose in the matter when a draft motion for removal of the CJI was released to the press on March 27 which had an effect of intimidating the judiciary. The plea also referred to various media reports carrying the statements of MPs and politicians in this regard and said no law was made by Parliament which permits the circulation of draft notice of motion to the press.