NEW DELHI: Standing in defence of Jagdeep Dhankhar today, Congress, which last December led the impeachment move against the former Vice-President labeling him the government’s spokesman voiced support despite its earlier stance.
As soon as the Congress chief whip in the Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh and the Congress deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi questioned Dhankhar’s resignation as Vice-President, flagging the unexplained absence of Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and Rajya Sabha leader J P Nadda at the House Business Advisory Committee meeting chaired by Dhankhar on Monday, Shiv Sena UBT’s Priyanka Chaturvedi reminded her colleagues of the impeachment move.
Meanwhile, BJP’s Nishikant Dubey, in the first remarks by a party leader on Dhankhar’s resignation, recalled how the opposition, led by Congress, had given a notice to impeach Dhankhar on December 10, 2024.
“The opposition is playing the role Kader Khan played in films…at least respect someone’s health condition,” said Dubey, tagging a December 10 news story about the opposition’s move to impeach Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar.
In December, a fractured Opposition had united to submit a notice to move a no-confidence motion against Dhankhar, accusing him of bias in conducting House proceedings. It was the first such notice against a Rajya Sabha Chairman since the Upper House was constituted on April 3, 1952.
“All parties belonging to the INDIA group have had no option but to formally submit a no-confidence motion against the RS Chairman for the extremely partisan manner in which he has been conducting the proceedings of the Council of States,” Jairam Ramesh had said at that time.
On Tuesday, the Congress leader said there are “far deeper reasons” for Dhankhar’s resignation than meet the eye.
Jairam Ramesh said Dhankhar chaired the Business Advisory Committee of the Rajya Sabha at 12.30 pm on Monday.
“It was attended by most members, including Leader of the House JP Nadda and the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju. After some discussion, the BAC decided to meet again at 4:30 PM,” he pointed out in a post on X.
“At 4:30 pm, the BAC reassembled under the chairmanship of Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar. It waited for Mr Nadda and Mr Rijiju to arrive. They never came. Jagdeep Dhankhar was not personally informed that the two senior Ministers were not attending. Rightly he took umbrage and rescheduled the BAC for today at 1 PM,” Ramesh claimed.
So “something very serious” happened yesterday between 1 PM and 4:30 PM to account for the deliberate absence of Nadda and Rijiju from the second BAC yesterday, he said.
“Now in a truly unprecedented move, Shri Jagdeep Dhankar has resigned. He has given health reasons for doing so. Those should be respected. But it is also a fact that there are far deeper reasons for his resignation,” Ramesh claimed.
While always lauding post-2014 India, he spoke fearlessly for the welfare of farmers, forcefully against what he called ‘ahankar (arrogance)’ in public life, and strongly on judicial accountability and restraint, the Congress leader said.
“To the extent possible under the current G2 ruling regime, he tried to accommodate the Opposition. He was a stickler for norms, proprieties, and protocol, which he believed were being consistently disregarded in both his capacities,” Ramesh said.
“Jagdeep Dhankar’s resignation speaks highly of him. It also speaks poorly of those who had got him elected as Vice President in the first instance,” he added.
But back in December, Jairam Ramesh had defended the move to impeach Dhankhar while piloting the no-confidence resolution against him. The resolution acknowledged the pivotal importance of the Rajya Sabha Chairman’s position but stated that “Chairman Dhankhar had reduced the prestige of the position he occupies to that of a spokesman for the government of the day.”
The notice of impeachment was condemned by the government, which said it had been brought by the Congress to “deflect attention from the party’s top brass links with Hungarian-American businessman George Soros and his anti-India agenda”.
“The NDA has the majority. This notice which the Congress has brought to hide its sins and deflect attention from the connection between itself and George Soros and his anti-India actions will never succeed. We are proud of Chairman Dhankhar, who comes from a humble farming background and has always espoused the cause of the poor,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju had said after the Congress-led INDIA bloc parties piloted the move.
Signed by 60 opposition MPs of the Rajya Sabha, the notice—complete with a resolution mentioning the rationale for the move— was submitted to Rajya Sabha Secretary-General P C Mody.
The signatories included MPs from the Congress, TMC, AAP, RJD, Samajwadi Party, DMK and the Left.
However, Congress president and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, as well as senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, did not sign the notice.