Thaindian News

Kolkata, Sep 5 (IANS) Soumitra Sen, who resigned as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, has accepted the stand of the Lok Sabha that he will not be impeached by it and wants to put an end to the “debate”, his lawyer said Monday.

With President Pratibha Patil accepting his resignation, the Lok Sabha Monday dropped impeachment proceedings against Sen.

“We are accepting the verdict of the MPs of the lower house,” Sen’s lawyer Subhash Bhattacharya told IANS.

“We’d like to put an end to the debate,” he added.

Law Minister Salman Khurshid moved the motion to drop impeachment proceedings against Sen in the Lok Sabha. Speaker Meira Kumar put it to vote before the house, which adopted the motion.

Sen was held guilty by the Rajya Sabha last month on charges of misappropriating Rs.33.23 lakh in a 1983 case when he was appointed a receiver by the high court. The upper house had on Aug 18 adopted an impeachment motion for removal of Sen with 189 members voting in favour and 16 against.

Justice Sen is the first judge against whom any of the two houses of parliament has passed an impeachment motion. The first such attempt to impeach a judge was against Justice V. Ramaswami of the Supreme Court in 1993, but the motion to remove him fell through in the Lok Sabha as the ruling Congress abstained.

A three-member committee constituted by Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari found the charges of financial irregularities against Sen to be correct.

Sen, then an advocate, was held guilty of misappropriating Rs.33.23 lakh in a 1983 case when he was appointed a receiver by the high court.