Jaitley accuses Congress of using impeachment as a political tool

New Delhi, April 20

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday accused the Congress party of trivialising the power of impeachment and using it as a political tool.

In a scathing Facebook post, the senior BJP leader said the 114-page judgment in the Judge Loya death case authored by Justice DY Chandrachud on behalf of the three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court “exposes every fact of the conspiracy” to generate falsehood as propaganda in the public and political space.

He said Amit Shah (now BJP president) had no role in the Sohrabuddin case and it was an alleged encounter executed by some central agencies through the state police.

Referring to the move of the Congress and six other opposition parties to impeach Chief Justice of India Deepak Misra, Jaitley said: “The Congress Party and its friends have started using impeachment as a political tool.”

Stressing that trivialising the use of power of impeachment is a “dangerous event”, he said the move is an attempt to “intimidate” a judge and send a message to other judges “that if you don’t agree with us, fifty MPs are enough for a revenge action”.

Referring to the judgment in the Loya death case, Jaitley said that never so blatantly in the past had national political parties, a few retired judges and some senior lawyers “so closely identified themselves with the generation of falsehood that they almost come out as conspirators”. PTI