New Delhi: The new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill (BNSS), 2023 proposes that a death-row convict whose mercy petition has been disposed of by the president will have no right to appeal against the decision, PTI reported.
Article 72 of the Constitution empowers the president to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of anyone convicted of any offence.
“No appeal shall lie in any court against the order of the president made under Article 72 of the constitution and it shall be final, and any question as to the arriving of the decision by the President shall not be enquired into in any court,” section 473, an addition to the BNSS Bill, which proposes to replace the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), read.
The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the exercise of prerogative powers, such as clemency and pardons, by the president or the governor may be challenged in court. In some cases, like that of Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon and in the Nirbhaya case, death row convicts approached the court at the 11th hour, seeking a review of the president’s rejection of their mercy petitions. The Supreme Court refused to stay the executions in both the cases.
The new bill also seeks to avoid a delay on account of separate pleas filed by multiple convicts in the same case
According the proposed Bill, a jail superintendent shall ensure that every convict, in case there are more than one in a case, submits the mercy plea within 60 days and where no such petition is received from the other convicts, he shall himself send the names, addresses, copies of the case records and all other details to the Union or the state government, along with the original mercy petition, the report said.
The president shall decide the petitions of all the convicts together.
Apart from specifying time-limits for filing mercy pleas in death-row cases with the governor (Article 161) and the president (Article 72), section 473 of the BNSS Bill seeks to give the Union 60 days’ time from the date of receipt of the state government’s comments on the pleas to send its recommendation to the president.
While no time-limit has been specified for the president for disposing of the mercy petitions, the president’s decision on such a plea is sought to be communicated by the Union to the state home department and jail superintendent concerned within 48 hours of the disposal, the report said.