Supreme Court slams government claim that only President has power to pardon

Supreme Court slams government claim that only President has power to pardon

Subject: Polity

Section: President

Context: Centre’s claim that the President, and not the Tamil Nadu Governor, has “exclusive power” to decide Rajiv Gandhi assassination convict A.G. Perarivalan’s plea for pardon

Background:

Rajiv Gandhi Assasination case: https://optimizeias.com/rajiv-gandhi-assasination-case/

SC Stand:

• Centre’s claim that the President, and not the Tamil Nadu Governor, has “exclusive power” to decide Rajiv Gandhi assassination convict A.G. Perarivalan’s plea for pardon. By that analogy, if a pardon is sought in a murder case, the Governor should refer it to the President, SC questioned centre
• A three-judge Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao said the government’s argument if taken at face value, would leave Article 161 (the constitutional power of Governors of States to grant pardon) a “dead-letter”.
• Then, the end result of centre’s submissions is that all pardons granted for IPC offences by Governors all these years are

Pardoning Power of President and Governor:

Article 72 of the Constitution empowers the President to grant pardons to persons which includes,

• Pardon: It removes both the sentence and the conviction and completely absolves the convict from all sentences, punishments and disqualifications.
• Commutation: It denotes the substitution of one form of punishment for a lighter form. For example, a death sentence may be commuted to rigorous imprisonment, which in turn may be commuted to a simple imprisonment.
• Remission: It implies reducing the period of sentence without changing its character. For example, a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for two years may be remitted to rigorous imprisonment for one year.
• Respite: It denotes awarding a lesser sentence in place of one originally awarded due to some special fact, such as the physical disability of a convict or the pregnancy of a woman offender.
• Reprieve: It implies a stay of the execution of a sentence (especially that of death) for a temporary period. Its purpose is to enable the convict to have time to seek pardon or commutation from the President.
• Under Article 161 of the Constitution, the governor of a state also possesses the pardoning power. Hence, the governor can also grant pardons, reprieves, respites and remissions of punishment or suspend, remit and commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence against a state law.
• But, the pardoning power of the governor differs from that of the President in following two respects:
  • The President can pardon sentences inflicted by court martial (military courts) while the governor cannot.
  • The President can pardon death sentence while governor cannot. Even if a state law prescribes death sentence, the power to grant pardon lies with the President and not the governor. However, the governor can suspend, remit or commute a death sentence. In other words, both the governor and the President have concurrent power in respect of suspension, remission and commutation of death sentence.

Earlier SC judgements on Governors Pardoning Power:

• SC held that the Governor of a State can pardon prisoners, even before they have served a minimum 14 years of prison sentence.
  • Therefore, Pardoning powers overrides Section 433A: The Governor’s power to pardon overrides Section 433A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) – which mandates that a prisoner’s sentence can be remitted only after 14 years of jail.