Condemning the Centre for delay of up to 12 years to decide on mercy petitions, in its latest decision of sparing 15 death row prisoners the rope, the Supreme Court has sought to clarify that inordinate delay means delay up to a year maximum.
Although refraining from laying down a specific timeframe for the President or Governors to decide on mercy pleas under Article 72 and 161, the three-judge bench in its decision on Tuesday held the mirror to the past to suggest that the Centre till 1980 used to dispose mercy petitions in a matter of 15 days to 10 months. This pace was restored from 1989-97, when mercy petitions came to be processed within a record five months. Although, between 1980 and 1988, the decision on mercy petitions took an average of four years, the bench found it unfortunate that history had repeated over in the present times when it took a maximum of 12 years to decide on the pleas.
“We sincerely hope and believe that the mercy petitions under Article 72/161 can be disposed of at a much faster pace than what is adopted now, if the due procedure prescribed by law is followed in verbatim,” said the SC decision pronounced by a bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Shiva Kirti Singh on Tuesday.
Although under the powers of judicial review, the apex court cannot set a time frame for the President to decide on pardon appeals, the bench was surprised to note that in the past, decisions on mercy petitions were swift.
Referring to a document by Bikramjeet Batra, who compiled the records of disposal of mercy petitions over the years, the court concluded, “At the outset, this document reveals that the mercy petitions were disposed of more expeditiously in former days that in the present times.”
The record indicated that from 1980-88, a delay of four years was considered to be undue and inordinate as previous to it, decisions by Government took a maximum of only 11 months. This situation resulted in a slew of apex court decisions, one of which that came to be passed in TV Vatheeswaran case (1983), even fixed two years as an outer limit to entitle a condemned prisoner seek commutation of death penalty. This desperation on part of the court not to keep prisoners awaiting decision on mercy petition for years reflected yet again in Triveniben case (1988). It overruled the two-year time period fixed in Vatheeswaran, but held inordinate delay to be a ground to alter death sentence.
No sooner the decisions came, the Government adopted a corrective course. From 1989-97, “the average time taken for deciding the mercy petitions during this period was brought down to an average of five months from four years,” the court observed.
“Keeping a convict in suspense while consideration of his mercy petition by the President for many years is certainly an agony for him/her,” said the judgment, as the judges were of the view it created “adverse physical conditions and psychological stress” on convict on death row.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has Rules on handling of mercy petitions that specifies at every stage when the mercy petition is dealt with by the officer in MHA, or Superintendent of Jail, the language used there is “at once”, “immediately” and “as expeditiously as possible”. Ending with a hope, the bench said, “We can certainly request the concerned Ministry to follow its own rules rigorously which can reduce, to a large extent, the delay caused.”