The ruling coalition has registered the impeachment motion against Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra Shumsher Rana on Sunday after CJ Rana tried to become active in appointing judges in capacity of the head of Judicial Council.
Coalition leaders have confided with Setopati that the impeachment motion has not been brought all of a sudden and instead been lodged after continuous deliberations.
CJ Rana's resignation was being sought from inside the judiciary following accusation of seeking appointment of his brother-in-law Gajendra Hamal in the Cabinet expansion by Prime Minister (PM) Sher Bahadur Deuba, controversies including picking bench in different cases including those about House dissolution, accusations about CJ Rana getting a share of spoils in appointments at constitutional bodies, and his controversial verdict in some of the cases.
The Nepal Bar Association (NBA) has been protesting against CJ Rana for months demanding his resignation and been lobbying with the political parties to impeach CJ Rana after he refused to resign explicitly pointing that he will have to be impeached to be removed.
The coalition leaders grew suspicious after CJ Rana, instead of resigning over the controversy, started to become active in appointment of 18 dsitrict judges in capacity of head of the Judicial Council and Judicial Service Commission.
The council, which can appoint not just district judges but even the judges at the High Court, has not been able to meet following the controversies about CJ Rana. But CJ Rana called meetings of the two bodies last Sunday and Monday and could not convene the meetings only after Law Minister Dilendra Prasad Badu urged him to stop the meetings.
CJ Rana had sent a message to Badu threatening that he will again convene the meetings and take decisions, according to the sources. The leaders claimed that the coalition leaders decided to impeach CJ Rana on February 8 after his threatening stance.
The coalition had agreed to register the impeachment on the House meeting scheduled on Febraury 9 itself but the meeting could not be held due to the disagreement over the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact.
The case about charging former PMs Madhav Kumar Nepal and Baburam Bhattarai—who are both in the ruling coalition now—for corruption in the Baluwatar land grab scam is currently sub judice in the Supreme Court (SC). The coalition suspected that CJ Rana could influence the verdict were the case to be listed for hearing by the bench with justices close to CJ Rana, according to the sources in the coalition.
The meeting of the top coalition leaders including PM Deuba, CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and CPN (Unified Socialist) on Saturday also decided to register the impeachment motion along with the arrangements to get the MCC Compact ratified by the House without support of Maoist Center and Unified Socialist.
The parties started to gather signature of lawmakers from early Sunday morning after the decision and the impeachment motion was ultimately registered at around 11:15 in the morning with signature of 98 lawmakers.
