A serious question for considerationPresident  pratibha patil just before retirement has been subjected of strong criticism allegedly for accepting over 35 mercy petitions and commuting death sentence to life imprisonment of these accused persons convicted of rape and murder of children- an action which causes justifiable disbelief and alarm. She is even said to have commuted the sentence of a person who died five years ago (showing a kind of sloth in disposing of such delicate matters).

The president’s office being naturally piqued at getting the blame and finding an unexplained and unfair silence from home minister P.chidambaram, refusing to clarify that it was he who had recommended the pardon, has had to come out with a press statement that all communities are “not playing to the gallery” by president but rather she has acted “on the aid and advice of the home minister”.

The president is on firm footing- it has been held by the supreme court that pardon under article 72 of the constitution being an executive action by the president is to be exercised on the advice of the central government, which means the home minister. Hence it is incumbent on Mr. Chidambaram to explain to the public as to what were the special considerations which led him to recommend pardon to these 35 accused persons held guilty of most heinous crimes. This is an instance where explanation from the home ministry is urgently required if faith in even and serious dealing with such sensitive matters is to the accepted by the public- more so when president patil is retiring in three weeks.

Mr. Chidambaram owes to president patil to remove the unfair cloud, the blame for which, if any, has to be taken by him and not by her, who only did the ministerial act of following the home minister’s advise, which she was bound to accept under the constitution. The reasons by Mr. Chidambaram need to placed in public domain, so that the electorate can profitably be amazed how such serious matters of life and death are dealt with by the home ministry.

It also needs explaining that while Mr. Chidambaram has had all the time for consideration and to give in for such unlikely pardon, he has not found time to even consider and deal with cases of others having been awarded the death sentence.

This is all the more urgent because previous presidents had specifically formulated certain guidelines before execution of the death sentence. Thus president APJ abdul kalam, who had 25 mercy petitions pending before him, only dealt with two, rejecting one and pardoning the other. He took keen interest in laying down specific criteria for consideration of the petitions. He addressed detailed queries to the home ministry about the poverty of the accused and whether accused had proper legal help for his defence, and raised questions about other petitions and sent these to the home minister for further clarification.

President K.R narayanan also chose a similar role by disposing of only one of the 10 petitions pending before him. Of course, we had the opposite case of president S.D sharma who rejected all 14 mercy petitions filed before him. These illustrations show that even in disposing of mercy petitions, the president, though objective, is yet subconsciously influenced by major inarticulate premise of their personal views on the question of death penalty. Thus, a certain kind of arbitrariness at granting pardon is bound to happen. Let me clarify- for people like me who advocate the abolition of death penalty- even a messy policy of pardon is to be welcomed because at least by this process the horror of death penalty is somewhat lessened, because I fully accept the stand of Dr ambedkar, who said, “I think that the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether” and that of jayaparkash narayan, the great socialist leader. Who said, “death sentence is no remedy for such crime”.

Ironically, after the rarest doctrine of death penalty was propounded in 1980 by the supreme court in 40 percent of the cases during 1980-90 whereas it was 37.7 percent in 1970-80. for high courts the figures confirming the death sentence rose from 59 percent in 1970-80 to 65 percent during 1980-90.

The vociferous opposition to the abolition of the death penalty springs from the myth that it can lead to an increase in murders. Facts show other wise. In 1945-50 the state of travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950-55 when the death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders.

A survey conducted by the united nations in 1988 concluded that research has failed to provide any evidence that executions have greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment.

A survey released in September 2000 by the new york times found that during the last 20 years the homicide rate in the states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in the states without the death penalty.

Since 1973, as many as 123 prisoners have been released in the US after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. So far, 139 countries, from all regions of the world, have abolished the death penalty and 150 have put a moratorium on it. Mahatma Gandhi openly proclaimed, “I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take my life because he alone gives it.” Must this land of the budhha and Gandhi continue to present such a negative face against human rights by retaining the death penalty.