Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice-President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday took strong exception to the remarks made by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in her critique of his statement regarding the judiciary. Terming the former Congress president’s remarks as “severely inappropriate”, Dhankhar said in the Upper House today that Gandhi’s remarks are distanced from the truth and advised leaders to refrain from subjecting constitutional office to partisan stances.
“The statement imparted by the Hon’ble chairperson of the UPA is far distanced from my reflections. Delegitimising the judiciary is beyond my contemplation. It is a pillar of democracy. I would urge and expect leaders across the political spectrum to bear in mind not to subject high constitutional offices to partisan stances,” Dhankhar said.
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On Wednesday, Sonia Gandhi accused the Narendra Modi government of making a deliberate attempt to delegitimise the judiciary and reduce its standing in the eyes of the people.
“A troubling new development is the calculated attempt underway to delegitimise the judiciary. Ministers and even a high constitutional authority have been enlisted to make speeches attacking the judiciary on various grounds… It is quite clear that this is not an effort to provide reasonable suggestions for improvement. Rather, it is an effort to reduce the standing of the judiciary in the eyes of the public,” Gandhi, chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party, said on Wednesday.
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Gandhi was referring to the recent run-ins between the government and the judiciary on the issue of judicial appointments, among other issues. Earlier this month, Dhankhar had termed the Supreme Court’s scrapping the National Judicial Appointment Commission Bill as a case of “severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty”. The Bill pertained to the process of appointment of judges to the higher judiciary that would replace the existing collegium system of appointments.