Death Row mercy pleas: Kalam for pardon to most

The cases involve convicted conspirators in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, members of Veerappan’s gang, the man who attacked former Youth Congress chief M S Bitta, and several other dreaded criminals.

All their appeals against the death sentence have been exhausted and their mercy petitions are with Rashtrapati Bhavan, some for as long as eight years.

Though Article 72 of the Constitution says that ‘‘the President shall have the power to grant pardons,’’ it has always been interpreted to mean that, like in most matters, the President is bound by whatever advice the Council of Ministers gives on mercy petitions as well.

Kalam’s stand, however, underlines an unresolved legal controversy. Kalam perhaps drew inspiration from one of his predecessors, R Venkataraman, who asked in his memoirs, ‘‘should not the President have discretion to examine any extenuating circumstance?’’ Venkataraman went on to say that the ‘‘absence of such a power unnecessarily brings blame to the President. Only jurists understand that the word ‘President’ is a shortened form for the Central Government.’’

President Kalam had asked the Home Ministry to review these cases and last month, even that exercise was completed with the Home Minister’s recommendation that the Government’s stand remained unchanged in all these cases: that these were not fit for Presidential pardon.

The President’s latest advice has come in the form of a note addressed to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil earlier last week. Along with the note, Rashtrapati Bhavan has returned all the bulky mercy petition files which had piled up in Rashtrapati Bhavan since the tenure of former President K R Narayanan.

The President is understood to have advocated a radical move for reform and retribution, in which he has asked that the convicts be treated with compassion, be provided counselling and spiritual guidance instead of the gallows. He has specifically mentioned that the Government may consider grant of clemency and commutation of the death penalties after re-examination.

While discussing the pending cases in one bunch, he has, for instance, mentioned the case of a death row convict who is over 75 years of age and opined that such persons should be converted into human assets by the State instead of liabilities since there was no chance of them returning to a life of crime.

He has even suggested that such Death Row convicts be allowed to spend the remaining years of their life with their families.

MHA records show that while mercy petitions were disposed of regularly in the past, the pile-up began during the tenure of President Narayanan. When Kalam took over, he inherited around 12 mercy petitions and in the three years of his tenure, the figure has risen to the present 20 files.

The solitary instance in which President Kalam earlier gave his decision for rejecting the mercy petition on the advice of the MHA was in the case of child rapist Dhananjay Chatterjee who on August 14 last year became the 55th person to hang since Independence.

MHA officials say that while the convicts on death row may actually benefit from the procrastination by successive Presidents, the fact is that there is no deadline for the Head of State to decide on these pleas. It was in 1980 that the Supreme Court in the Bachchan Singh vs State of Punjab case set the standard of death penalty being awarded in the ‘‘rarest of rare’’ cases.

Rashtrapati Bhavan officials said they had no comments to make on the issue and despite repeated attempts, Home Minister Shivraj Patil could not be contacted.