India upper house deputy chair rejects opposition move to impeach VP Dhankar

A move by Indian opposition parties to impeach Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar for allegedly performing his job in a partisan manner was rejected, parliament said on Thursday.

The vice president, India’s second highest constitutional office, acts as the chair of the upper house of parliament, known as the Rajya Sabha, and opposition parties have accused Dhankhar of being partisan in his role.

Sansad Television, the parliament’s TV channel, said in a post on X that the opposition’s notice has been dismissed.

Harivansh Narayan Singh, deputy chairman of parliament’s upper house, said the notice to impeach Dhankhar was “severely flawed” and aimed at demeaning the constitutional office of vice president.

India’s vice president also acts as the country’s president if there is a temporary vacancy.

The winter session of parliament has been disrupted several times with government and opposition parties accusing each other of not allowing legislative business by creating political controversies.

Bribery allegations against billionaire Gautam Adani, religious conflict in a northern town and ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Manipur are some of the issues that have jolted the proceedings of the legislature in this session, which began on November 25 and was scheduled to break on Friday.

Although the opposition was unlikely to garner enough votes to remove Dhankhar, the move was expected to worsen the fraught relations between the opposition and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as Dhankhar was elected as a candidate of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Jairam Ramesh, spokesman of the main opposition Congress party, said last week that the opposition had “no option but to formally submit a no-confidence motion” against Dhankhar for the “extremely partisan manner” in conducting the proceedings of the house.

The BJP and main opposition Congress party did not immediately issue any statement on the matter.