Sibal slams VP over 'SC super Parliament' remark

Highlights

SC advocate Jethmalani defends Dhankhar’s 'bold call-out' on ‘judicial overreach’

New Delhi: Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal slammed Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday for questioning the judiciary over the timeline for the president to take decisions, saying this is "unconstitutional" and he had never seen any Rajya Sabha chairman make "political statements" of this nature.

A day after Dhankhar used strong words against the judiciary, Sibal asserted that the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman remain equidistant between the opposition and the ruling party, and cannot be the "spokesperson of the party".

"Everyone knows that the Lok Sabha Speaker's chair is in between. He or she is the Speaker of the House, not the speaker of one party. They also don't vote, they only vote when there is a tie. The same is with the upper house. You are equidistant between the opposition and the ruling party," the senior advocate said at a press conference in New Delhi.

Sibal recalled the 1975 Supreme Court judgment that invalidated then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's election. "People would remember that when the Supreme Court's decision came regarding the election of Indira Gandhi, only one judge - Justice Krishna Iyer - gave the decision, and she was unseated," he said. "That was acceptable to Dhankhar ji, but now a two-judge bench ruling against the government is being questioned?"

Defending Dhankhar’s position, Supreme Court senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani took to social media platform X to clarify the legal basis for the Vice President’s remarks.

“While some may question the constitutional propriety of a symbolic second head of the State entering the arena of conflict between 2 limbs of govt, the pointing out of a patent constitutional flaw (the VP is an accomplished jurist besides) that Article 145(3) of the Constitution mandated that a question pertaining to the interpretation of a Constitutional provision be dealt with by a 5 judge Bench only and that the 2 judge Bench decision was a nullity would surely be in discharge of the Vice President's sworn obligation to uphold the Constitution,” Jethmalani wrote.