Unwilling to be at the centre of the debate over mercy petitions, President Pranab Mukherjee’s office has announced that it will not divulge any more information on the rejection, pendency or commutation of mercy petitions, leaving instead the Union Home Ministry to deal with the issue.
On Thursday, the President’s office made changes to its website and dropped the section that listed the mercy petitions the President had received and those that were disposed of or put on hold by former Presidents.
The section has been replaced with an exhaustive list of international tours undertaken by the President since 1958. A list of domestic tours of the current President undertaken till date is also in the public domain.
Sources said Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had sent the final recommendations regarding seven mercy petitions, involving nine convicts on death row, to President Mukherjee. These petitions were forwarded by the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the MHA late last year.
Keywords: Mercy petitions, Pranab Mukherjee, Home Ministry
PLAYING WITH LIVES!
Death penalty needs to be seriously debated as increasingly one finds
that people are unwilling to treat human life as precious and rare
among the species that inhabit the blue planet. While the terror
groups pay scant regard to sacrificing their own by convincing people
to blow themselves up, the civil society which has its own laws is
equally insensitive when it comes to dealing with fellow humans lying
in wait to die in the country's prisons. No one has the right to
take away another's life least of all the society itself collectively
as hanging a human does not deter another by carrying out a heinous
crime. Even after nearly 2000 hangings in last one decade there are
more in the waiting to die in our prisons.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
The rejetion of mercy petitions by Veerappan's associates is only to show that his action on Afzal's case was not motivvated by political considerations. Whatever it is, Pranab Mukerji has suddenly turned blood thirsty. He would have gone down in history as a great president if only he had recommended life terms for all those awaiting mercy, thus paving the way for abolition of capital punishment.
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