The failure of the motion in the House that day had capped a long and torturous saga that began in April-May 1990, when reports first appeared in the media about the remarkably ostentatious nature of the expenditure incurred by Justice Ramaswami for his official residence when he was Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court between November 12, 1987 and October 8, 1989.

On February 1, 1991, came an unprecedented resolution by the Supreme Court Bar Association, calling for Justice Ramaswami’s impeachment, and asking the Chief Justice not to assign him any judicial work. This was followed later that month by 108 members of the Lok Sabha, belonging to the BJP, National Front, and Left parties, submitting a notice of a motion to the Speaker calling for his removal. The Constitution and the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, require such a motion to be signed by at least 100 members of the Lok Sabha or 50 members of the Rajya Sabha.

Speaker Rabi Ray admitted the motion on March 12, 1991; as mandated by the Judges (Inquiry) Act, he constituted a committee of Justice P B Sawant of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice P D Desai of the Bombay High Court and Justice O Chinnappa Reddy, retired judge of the Supreme Court, to inquire into the charges.

Justice Ramaswami was found guilty on 11 of the 14 charges, some in part and some in full.

The Speaker placed the impeachment motion before the House on May 10, 1993. Counsel for the judge Kapil Sibal, made a six-hour presentation, in which he sought to ridicule the motion for the removal of a judge “for purchases of pieces of carpet or a few suitcases”. Even before the motion was taken up, a section of Congress MPs from Tamil Nadu had issued a statement calling upon the leadership to defeat the motion. The Congress high command finally decided to direct party MPs to abstain from voting.

And so it was that the motion to impeach Justice Ramaswami — the only instance in the history of India’s higher judiciary of the Chief Justice of India recommending that a judge be removed from service, apart from the latest case that involves Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta HC —failed.