Congress demands inquiry into government's 'interferance' in judiciary

The Congress on Monday accused the Modi government of "interfering in the judiciary" and demanded an independent separate parliamentary and judicial probes.

Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said: "The grave apprehensions of the Congress and the country regarding interference with the highest levels of the judiciary have been proved correct."

Referring to the statement of retired judge Kurian Jospeh, the Congress leader said he had in clearly talked about arbitrary bench selection, external influences by implication, remote control and political biases injected into the system by the government.

His remarks came after Joseph on Sunday in an interview to the Times of India said that four judges of the top court suspected that then Chief Justice Dipak Misra was being "controlled" from the outside.

Justice Joseph, who retired on November 29, said he and the three other senior-most Supreme Court judges felt that Justice Misra was allocating cases to judges with a political bias.

Hitting out at the BJP-led government, Singhvi said: "The accountability owed by this government, which it owes as political executive to the nation, we demand an immediate response from the Prime Minister. We further condemn this unconstitutional, invasive and illegal effort by the government."

The Congress leader said the Modi government had become known for its "dirty tricks department".

"Imagine the implications of the categorical statement of Justice Joseph. Which were those cases where these blatant and despicable initiatives were taken by the government? Who took these initiatives, how many times it was done?

"Our attempts to rein in, to check, to warn against such misadventures has now been proved correct," he said.

Singhvi added: "It establishes the way the government and the ruling party mind works. It proves their complete lack of commitment to the nation and the four foundation pillars and institutions of the nation...

"We therefore need separate and distinct parliamentary inquiry and independent separate and distinct judicial inquiry... to bring all these nefarious activities before the nation."

--IANS

aks/mr