JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY OR POLITICAL COERCION? THE IMPEACHMENT MOTION AGAINST JUSTICE SWAMINATHAN

The impeachment motion against Justice G.R. Swaminathan marks a troubling moment in Indian constitutional history.

- PRANJAL CHATURVEDI AND ISHA TIWARI

The parliamentary process for removing judges, a means of ensuring judicial accountability, is being exploited as a tool to coerce the judge.

To see this impeachment motion as an isolated event would be to miss the forest for the trees. Using impeachment as a political weapon to pressure the judiciary is part of a longstanding pattern. It is a concerning continuum of attempts by political bodies to intimidate, threaten, influence, coerce, and symbolically punish judges for ruling against their ideological or political interests.

In the present case, the INDIA Bloc moved an impeachment motion under Article 217, read with Article 124, against Justice G.R. Swaminathan in both the houses of parliament. The impeachment motion is in reference to the Judgement delivered by Hon'ble Justice G.R. Swaminathan, in the case titled Rama Ravikumar v The District Collector, Madurai @ Ors., pronounced, to light the traditional lamp at a stone pillar, atop a hillock in Tamil Nadu. on December 1, 2025. This motion is also bizarre in the sense that it is the first time an impeachment motion has been initiated against a judge for passing a judgment.

DISAGREEMENT BECOMES DISMISSAL

The extraordinary remedy of initiating an impeachment motion for the removal of a judge, for ‘Proved Misbebaviour’ or ‘Judicial Misconduct’, being used as a rhetorical political tool to express disapproval of a judicial outcome, is against the constitutional spirit. Such developments must raise an alarm bell for judicial independence and the democratic health of the country, and should not be taken casually. The sharp judicial response to the executive resistance by the state government led to a major judicial-executive confrontation in the state.