Court of elders

Rajya Sabha has taken up an impeachment motion against a judge, and the solemnity of the exercise inevitably framed the backdrop against which the question of Justice Soumitra Sen’s continuance in the Calcutta high court will be decided. The requisite MPs’ petition that set up the process cited two allegations for inquiring into misbehaviour: that Sen had misappropriated money he received in his capacity as high court-appointed receiver, and that he had misrepresented facts to the high court.

When Parliament converts into a court, and the proceedings are relayed live, it expectedly makes for riveting theatre. But apart form Sen’s future, the arguments also contextualise two pressing issues before Parliament: its capacity to summon its institutional strength amidst sporadic street protests questioning its efficacy, and the need to strike the right balance between accountability and judicial independence that should inform the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, currently pending in Parliament. The past few sessions have been such a record of abdication by MPs, cutting across the aisles — in initiating and taking forward debates or on addressing pending legislation, indeed even in getting the House to function — that they flirt with the danger of hollowing out their assertions of representativeness. Impeachment proceedings are, rightly, extremely rare. But the sobriety that Rajya Sabha instinctively assumed on Wednesday — whips demanding attendance, MPs extending each other the courtesy of a patient hearing — is one they should expect to be expected of them on an average day.

Impeachment of a judge also underlines the precious, and precarious, balance between institutions. The Judicial Bill has been recommended on the grounds that it would set up mechanisms for disciplinary action short of the extreme of removing a judge from office. Yet, lowering the bar for oversight of the judiciary could also be fraught with infringement of the judiciary’s independence. Parliament should not postpone that larger discussion.