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The Supreme court has asked the Centre whether there exists a timeline within which a mercy plea is to be filed by the death row convict which is to be placed before the President. The Bench was led by the Chief Justice of India, Sharad Arvind Bobde and Justices AS Bapanna and Hrishikesh Roy. The petition was filed by Advocate and a social activist, Shiv Kumar Tripathi who sought directions from the court so that a proper mechanism with specified rules, guidelines and procedures are formulated for disposing of the mercy petitions within a specified period of time.
The plea stated that Fundamental Rights, Article 14 (Equality before law) and Article 21 (Protection of life and Personal liberty) are violated of both convicts and victims because there is no proper procedure, rules and guidelines laid down regarding the disposal of mercy petitions. There has been an undue delay in disposing of the mercy petitions, which creates an unrest among the people and builds up doubts and leads to development of suspicion in minds of public.
The bench also stated that the judiciary cannot direct the President of India in these matters as he has own discretionary power to grant pardon to the mercy plea under Article 72, and thus this would only be possible to seek answer from the Ministry of the Home Affairs.
Tripathi in his plea highlights that in the absence and delay of specified written rules and procedures and guidelines laid down for timely disposal of the mercy petitions is same as amounting to disposal of the mercy petitions being discriminatory and arbitrary.
Centre has been given a period of four weeks to respond, by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who sought time to seek instructions in this matter.
Due to lack of proper guidelines and procedures and undue delay in the disposal of the pleas , the prisoners tend to take advantage of the situation by converting the death row punishment into life imprisonment as they take the defence of the speedy trial according to Article 21 , thus in these cases the victims and their families feel cheated.
Thus, in the case of absence of a prescribed form, the convict may not provide full information, for instance he may be illiterate or tries to hide sensitive information to make his side more favourable.
The power to grant pardon (Article 72) is an executive power thus no public hearing takes place, it’s upon the discretion of the President.
Tripathi suggested in his plea to sought for direction to prescribe written procedures, rules and lay down guidelines for timely and quick disposal of mercy pleas by the president as undue delays leads to open the gates for convicts to escape death penalty.
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