Goa’s ruling legislators and Ministers on Friday vehemently defended the BJP-led coalition Cabinet’s decision to seek pardon for convicted legislator Francisco alias Mickky Pacheco, who is serving a six-month term for assaulting a Government servant. led by Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’Souza, senior legislators from both, the BJP as well as alliance partners, said that if a legislative provision existed for condoning a sentence of a legislator, it should be used, even as civil society and activists opposed the Cabinet resolution which was passed unanimously on Wednesday.
“The Cabinet has approved the release of Mickky (an alias for Pacheco). It is a pardon. According to the list of offences in the IPC (Indian Penal Code) it is a minor offence. We have already sent it to the Governor, who will now take a decision,” D’Souza told The Pioneer.
Under Article 161 of the Indian Constitution, a Governor of a State has the power to pardon suspend, remit or commute sentences in certain cases after due application of her/his mind.
Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, who is out of station and expected to arrive in Goa on August 3, even as Secretariat sources informed that she had been telephonically been briefed about the Cabinet resolution seeking pardon for the former Minister.
Pacheco, a former Archives and Archaeology Minister, whose party is part of the ruling BJP-led coalition Government in Goa, was jailed on June 1 after the Supreme Court of India upheld his conviction in the 2006 case, in which Pacheco was accused of assaulting a Electricity Department junior engineer Kapil Natekar.
Pacheco also has a wide range of criminal cases registered against him which include culpable homicide, bigamy, assault and extortion. Pacheco is also being probed for illegal trafficking and money laundering by the US Government’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (BDS) and was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation in this regard in 2010.
D’Souza, however, said that the pardon was in harmony with the contemporary jurisprudence, which prefers reformation over punitive punishment.
“We are in an era of reformation. Our jurisprudence says we have to reform people rather than act punitive. We have to educate them. Our system cannot be punitive in nature,” D’Souza said.
Public Works Department Minister Sudin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, an alliance partner said that Pacheco should have the right to raise the issue of his constituents in the State Assembly.
Pacheco, a Catholic leader heads the Goa Vikas Party and in the 2012 State legislative Assembly poll, was a significant part of the BJP’s strategy to split the minority votes, which are a traditional Congress bastion.
The pardon move, however, has rankled civil society activists who have referred to it as “murder of democracy”.
“The power to pardon is founded on consideration of public good and is to be exercised only on the ground of public welfare… Mickky Pacheco being a political heavyweight, the Goa Government is clearly conniving and colluding with him to derail the due process of law and making a mockery of the judicial system,” said Right to Information activist Aires Rodrigues who has already petitioned Sinha appealing her not to endorse the pardon.