Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday said that he has received a notice for the impeachment of High Court judge Yashwant Varma, and directed the Secretary General to “take necessary steps in this direction”.
He said that a similar Motion was presented to the Lok Sabha Speaker, which was signed by more than 100 MPs.
This comes months after a large number of currency notes were recovered from the official residence of Justice Varma in the national capital in March. He was later transferred to the Allahabad High Court.
As Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal took the floor of the Rajya Sabha to announce that 152 Lok Sabha MPs have submitted a similar resolution to the Speaker, the Rajya Sabha Chairman informed that he has received a Notice of Motion for the impeachment of the judge, which was signed by more than 50 MPs.
“I need to inform you that I have received Notice of Motion…to constitute a statutory committee for the removal of Justice Yashwant Varma…This (notice) has been received by me today. It has been signed by more than 50 members of the Council of States. Thus, it meets the numerical requirement of signing by members of Parliament for setting in motion the process of removal of a high court judge…Since the Law Minister is present here and has so indicated that a similar Motion has come to be presented by a requisite number of MPs of Lok Sabha – more than 100, to the Lok Sabha Speaker, the provisions of Section 3(2) will come into effect and the Secretary-General will take necessary steps in this direction,” Dhankhar said.
