New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that repeated mercy petitions by death row convicts must be stopped and there must be a finality to the case after the President/Governor rejects their mercy pleas and courts also dismissed their appeals.
Making this submission before a five-judge Constitution bench comprising the Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices Ibrahim Kalifulla, Pinaki Ghose, A.M. Sapre and Uday Lalit, Ranjit Kumar, the Solicitor General said “if this continues then the whole procedure will be endless and it is a misuse of the provisions.” He said repeated mercy petitions are filed and citing the delay in disposal of such petitions commutation of death sentence is sought. The CJI agreed with the SG and said “it will be an endless exercise.”
The SG said this court should frame guidelines or interpret the provisions to ensure that repeated mercy pleas are avoided once the case attains finality. Earlier the CJI asked the SG “Can the Governor of a state entertain a second mercy petition from a death row convict after his first mercy petition is rejected by the President.”
In an apparent reference to the mercy petition filed before the Maharashtra governor by Yakub Memon on Tuesday soon after his curative petition was rejected, the CJI asked “what will happen if the Governor takes a contrary view and thus embarrass the President.” In Memon case, President had in April last rejected mercy petition filed by Yakub’s brother on behalf of Yakub and a fresh mercy plea was filed on Tuesday. The CJI asked the SG “Can we make a law on this or do you have any procedure on this?”
The SG submitted that the Union home ministry had evolved a procedure regarding mercy petitions and said “if the offence arising out of a state enacted law, the death convict can approach the Governor for mercy or if there was any change in circumstance but the Governor will have to be convinced about the change in the situation. He produced statistics to indicate in how many cases the apex court had awarded life sentence for a fixed period of 20, 25 or 30 years and life sentence for the whole life.
Pointing out that in the case of convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the death sentences were commuted to life term for the rest of their lives, he said in such a situation the TN government cannot exercise its executive power to grant remission. Since the President and governor had already exercise their powers under Articles 72 and 161 respectively in consultation with the Executive, the Executive cannot take a suo motu decision to grant remission and order their release. Since the President and Governor had already exercise their powers under Articles 72 and 161 respectively in consultation with the Executive, the Executive cannot take a suo motu decision to grant remission to the convicts.
Even assuming that the Tamil nadu government had acted in accordance with the judgment vesting it the remission power, the SG said “the State has no jurisdiction to order the release of seven life convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case as such a power vested only with the Union of India.”
