The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that State governments can suspend or remit sentences of convicts on their own if the situation demands.
It said the power to grant mercy is not dependent on any conditions.
In a hearing before a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice H.L. Dattu, senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing Tamil Nadu, referred to the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure to highlight that States can take a call without any role by the Centre. Mr. Dwivedi, however, said the State needs to seek the opinion of the presiding judge of the court which had confirmed the sentence of the convict before taking a decision on remission pleas.
The Bench is going into the maintainability of the Centre’s petition opposing the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to set free the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case after remitting their life sentences. Besides the maintainability of the plea, the Bench would also decide whether the sentence of a prisoner, whose death penalty has been commuted to life, can be remitted by the State government. It would also decide whether life term meant jail term for the rest of one’s life or a convict has a right to claim remission.
Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had trashed accusations that its decision to release seven Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts was “political and arbitrary.”
