Vice-President and Chairman of Rajya Sabha Venkaiah Naidu has rejected the notice for impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which was submitted by seven Opposition parties, including the Congress.

“Going through the five allegations mentioned in the notice, I am of the view that they are neither tenable nor admissible,” the Vice-President’s order on rejecting the notice for impeachment of CJI said.

“In the absence of credible and verifiable information placed before me which gives an indication of ‘misbehaviour’ or ‘incapacity’, it would be an inappropriate and irresponsible act to accept statements which have little empirical basis,” the order said.

Reacting to the development, Congress leader PL Punia said, “We don’t know what was the reason for the rejection (of impeachment notice). The Congress and other Opposition parties will talk to some legal experts and take the next step.”

On Sunday, Venkaiah Naidu cut short his visit to Hyderabad and started consultations with senior officials on the notice for impeachment.

The Vice-President held meetings with Attorney General KK Venugopal, ex-secretary general of the Lok Sabha Subhash Kashyap, former legislative secretary Sanjay Singh, former law secretary PK Malhotra and Rajya Sabha secretariat officials.

The notice for impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, submitted to Venkaiah Naidu on Friday, had signatures from 64 Rajya Sabha MPs and seven former MPs.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, and senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said the Opposition moved the impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India on grounds of “misbehaviour”.

The notice for impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra was signed by MPs from the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and the Communist Party of India and the CPI-Marxist.

Some of the senior Congress leaders, however, had refrained from signing the notice for impeachment, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley slammed the Congress for using impeachment as a “political tool” and called it a “revenge petition”.