New Delhi, July 28: The Tamil Nadu government has moved the Supreme Court seeking review of its judgement in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case in which it was ruled that the Centre has “primacy” over states’ right to grant remission.
The petition sought review of the apex court’s verdict in December last year virtually overturning the State government’s clemency decision. A five-judge bench had said the State governments must secure “concurrence” of the Union government before freeing convicts in certain cases.
The review petition said as per the Criminal Procedure Code, the central government had no primacy in matters relating to remission or commutation of sentence and that it was “erroneous” on the part of apex court bench to hold that Centre had a “special status” under the constitutional scheme.
“In the case of remitting the sentence of the convicts, it is the state government which is the executive authoritymore competent to decide the outcome of such release/remission of convicted persons because of its proximity to the facts and circumstances relating to the case pertaining to conviction of the convicts,” it said.
The court, which had settled questions arising out of Tamil Nadu government’s decision to free Gandhi’s assassins, had dealt elaborately with the situations where the Centre will prevail over states’ decision to grant remission which included cases where their powers are co-extensive, where trial has been held under central laws or conducted by agencies like CBI, or when they pertain to death penalty.
The Constitution bench had said states cannot exercise “suo motu” the power to grant remission without any specific plea from the convicts. The apex court had February 20, 2014 stayed the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to release three convicts -Murugan, Santhan and Arivu, whose death sentence had been commuted to life term by it two days before.
The Supreme Court had later also stayed the release of four other convicts — Nalini, Robert Pious, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, saying there were procedural lapses on part of the state government. Santhan, Murugan and Arivu are currently lodged in theCentral Prison, Vellore.
