The sparks that rose from the Tirupparankundram Deepam controversy have now drifted, disturbingly, towards the idea of impeaching Justice GR Swaminathan for a judgment he delivered on 1 December 2025. That such a suggestion could even momentarily find volume in public discourse reveals how fragile our constitutional culture can feel when tempers run high. Impeachment is the constitutional equivalent of a seismic button. It is not meant to be pressed in a gust of disagreement, nor waved about as a talisman of ideological displeasure. Its misuse, or even its performative invocation, can bruise the very institution it claims to protect.

A functioning democracy breathes through its constitutional silences: the spaces where restraint triumphs over impulse, and institutions signal trust in each other by refusing to trespass. Impeachment of judges is one such silence. The Constitution reserves this power for the rarest breaches of judicial propriety, to be exercised only after Parliament crosses the steep cliffs of proven “misbehaviour" or incapacity. The framers scattered these thresholds deliberately. They wished to ensure that judges could interpret law without the sword of political irritation hanging above them.

Yet, the present discourse treats impeachment as a discretionary political weapon, to be unsheathed whenever a judgment displeases a particular constituency. This trend, if allowed to grow roots, would tilt the judiciary’s working environment from one of interpretive freedom to one of anticipatory fear. A judge second-guessing the political consequences of an unpopular order is already half-censured. The independence of the judiciary is not destroyed in dramatic blows but in such incremental erosions.

Articles 124(4) and 217 of the Constitution craft impeachment as a carefully guarded gate. Only proved misbehaviour, corruption, or incapacity may justify the removal of a judge of the higher judiciary. India’s parliamentary history reinforces this scarcity.........

© News18