Utkarsh Anand : Indian Express : Mon Sep 20 2010 :
New Delhi : What is holding up the Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor from reaching a conclusive decision on the mercy plea of Afzal Guru the Parliament House attack convict on death row may finally be known. The Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the LG office, which received the file in this respect in May this year, to make information about the “delay” public.
Accepting the appeal of an RTI applicant, Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has recently asked the Delhi government to send the queries to the LG office by Monday with the directive that the latter would furnish the information about the movement of the file and the reasons for the delay, if any, in deciding the plea.
Mumbai-based RTI activist Chetan Kothari has posted a set of queries to the Home Ministry of the Delhi government regarding the movement of the file and its status vis-à-vis Afzal Guru’s mercy plea.
After four years and 16 reminders from the Union Home Ministry, the Delhi government had in May sent to the office of LG Tejinder Khanna the file on the mercy plea of Afzal Guru, who was sentenced to death by a Delhi trial court. The punishment was later upheld by the High Court as well as the Supreme Court.
In 2006, Afzal Guru moved the clemency plea before the state government, which is pending till date .
While sending the file to the LG office for his opinion, the Delhi government, it was learnt, had maintained that the state agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to reject the mercy plea.
According to the rules, the LG, after incorporating his opinion on the death sentence, has to send the file to the Union Home Ministry.
Kothari, through his RTI plea, had wanted to know when would the Delhi government send back the file and if there was a delay because of “any pressure from the Central Government or any other department”.
The Delhi Joint Secretary (Home) responded that there was no time limit to dispose of such mercy petitions and that his second query was not a valid question under the RTI Act.
Kothari then appealed to the CIC, contending that his query about the reason behind the delay was unanswered.
Joint Secretary submitted before the CIC that he only knew that the file was transferred to the LG’s office.
Finding the response unsatisfactory, Gandhi passed the order: “The respondent is directed to transfer it to LG’s office with instructions to transfer it to whichever office the file is with. The PIO who holds the file will send the reasons for the delay if any recorded on the file to the appellant. If there are no reasons recorded for the delay he will inform the appellant accordingly.”
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