New Delhi: The deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha, Harivansh Narayan Singh, has dismissed the Opposition’s notice to move a no-confidence motion to remove Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, who serves as the ex-officio chairman in the Upper House, from office, ruling that it is “replete with assertions only to malign the incumbent Vice President [Dhankhar] asserting events from the time he assumed office in August 2022”.
Sixty opposition MPs from the INDIA bloc parties on 10 August this year submitted the no-confidence notice against Dhankhar for his “partisan conduct” and for taking it upon himself to be an “impassioned spokesperson of the [central] government’s policies in public forums across the country”.
The notice for removing the Rajya Sabha chairman was a first in India’s young parliamentary democracy.
In his ruling, which was tabled in Rajya Sabha Thursday afternoon, Harivansh held the notice was an “act of impropriety, severely flawed, apparently drawn in haste and hurry to mar the reputation of the incumbent Vice President and aimed to damage the constitutional institution”.
Calling the notice “casual and cavalier”, the RS deputy chairman further stated that the notice is “severely flawed”, “wanting on every conceivable aspect” and does not even spell Dhankhar’s name correctly in its entire length.
“The gravity of this personally targeted notice bereft of facts and aimed at securing publicity makes its expose expedient, being misadventure in deliberate trivialising and demeaning of the high constitutional office of Vice President of the largest democracy,” Harivansh stated, adding, “The same deserves to be and is hereby dismissed.”
“The notice’s lack of bona fides and subsequent events unfolding revealed it being a calculated unwholesome attempt to garnish publicity; run down the constitutional institution; insinuate the personal image of the incumbent Vice President — notably, the first from the agricultural community to hold this office in the history of Independent India,” he further said.
The House was adjourned soon after the ruling was tabled by the Rajya Sabha secretary general, with the treasury benches sloganeering over claims that Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi Thursday noon pushed some BJP MPs at one of the gates of the Parliament, injuring them.
In his ruling, Harivansh also said that the Opposition, in its notice, invoked Article 67(b) of the Constitution, which peremptorily mandated at least 14 days’ notice for any resolution contemplating the V-P’s removal and thus, the notice of intention on 10 December this year could permit such a resolution only after 12 December.
The ruling said the current 266th session of the Council of States, as notified on 5 November commenced on 25 November and is scheduled to conclude on 20 December — “as known to all putative signatories”. “In full know of the situation that the resolution cannot be brought during this session, this was initiated only to set a narrative against the 2nd Highest Constitutional office and the Vice President,” Harivansh stated.
Noting the “prejudicial intent manifested through orchestration of a coordinated media campaign, including a televised press conference initiated by the LoP and chief whip of the Indian National Congress” last week, Harivansh said it was “an attempt to set afloat a narrative as if the authority was sitting over the notice of intention and thereby not discharging expectedly”.
“Constitutionally, after the intention of the notice to bring a resolution seeking removal of Vice President has been initiated, those taking such step had to move the resolution after 14 days, with no step called for from any quarter,” he ruled.
Harivansh also pointed out that the Leader of Opposition’s subsequent ten-point social media input on 12 December 2024, “apart from being distanced from institutional decorum, forces a conclusion to be part of a design to denigrate nation’s constitutional institutions and malign the incumbent Vice President”.
The Opposition’s move to submit the two-page notice to Rajya Sabha Secretary General P.C. Mody was merely symbolic because the INDIA bloc parties have 103 MPs in the Upper House and the support of Kapil Sibal, now an Independent MP. It is far short of the majority in the Upper House, which has an effective strength of 245.
While the BJP has 95 MPs in the Upper House, it has 118 members with its allies. Besides, there are six nominated members aligned with the BJP.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
