The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to Parliament on Justice Yashwant Varma’s petition challenging the legality of the committee constituted under the 1968 Judges Inquiry Act to look into the impeachment proceedings against him in an unaccounted cash row, Live Law reported.

Justices Dipankar Datta and AG Masih issued notice to the speaker as well as the secretariats of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. Varma had filed the petition anonymously as ‘X’, The Hindu reported.

The Allahabad High Court judge had sought to quash the Lok Sabha speaker’s decision to constitute a three-member judicial committee to investigate the allegations against him.

He argued that although the notices for his impeachment had been submitted both in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Om Birla, the speaker in the Lower House, formed the committee unilaterally without waiting for the admission of the motion by the Upper House chairperson, Bar and Bench reported.

Birla also did not wait for the joint consultation with the chairperson, he said.

This was in “clear derogation” of the provisions of the Act, Varma alleged.

In response, the bench asked how the legal experts in Parliament had allowed this to happen.

“So many MPs and legal experts but no one pointed this out?” Bar and Bench quoted Datta as asking.

Unaccounted cash was allegedly recovered at Varma’s official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14. He was a judge at the Delhi High Court at that time. The judge said he was in Bhopal when the cash was discovered and claimed that it did not belong to him or his family.

Amid the row, he was transferred to the Allahabad High Court.

A report of the in-house inquiry committee into the matter, released on May 3, concluded that there was “sufficient substance” in the charges against Varma. It held that the judge’s misconduct was “serious enough to call for initiation of proceedings for removal”.

To impeach a judge in Parliament, a removal motion is required to be signed by 100 Lok Sabha MPs or 50 Rajya Sabha MPs. If the motion is admitted in both Houses, a three-member judicial committee investigates the matter. The Parliament votes on the impeachment if the committee finds misconduct. If the motion gets two-thirds of the votes, the president is advised to remove the judge.

On July 25, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said that the decision to impeach Varma was unanimous and that 152 MPs from the ruling coalition and the Opposition parties had signed the motion.

There is consensus that the removal of Varma should be a joint effort, he had said, adding that the Lok Sabha will take up the proceedings before they move to the Rajya Sabha in line with the Judges Inquiry Act.

However, on August 12, the Lok Sabha speaker formed a three-member committee, comprising Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, Madras High Court Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and advocate B Vasudeva Acharya, to look into the matter.

In November, the committee sought a written statement from Varma on the charges against him, according to Bar and Bench. In response, the judge sought authenticated copies of the motions before both the Houses in July and any orders passed consequent to them.

In his petition in the Supreme Court, Varma alleged that he had yet to receive a response to the communications addressed to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Bar and Bench reported.

The petition said that the judge had also informed the committee about his intention to challenge the actions of the Lok Sabha speaker.

The committee then asked him to submit his written response on January 12 and appear before it on January 24, Bar and Bench reported.

The case is likely to be heard again on January 7.

Earlier, Varma had also challenged the in-house committee report that indicted him in the matter, as well as the recommendation made by Sanjiv Khanna, who was the chief justice of India when the report was submitted to the president and the prime minister to initiate impeachment proceedings against him.

In August, the Supreme Court dismissed both the petitions.