Prez's office rejects 74% mercy pleas in 3 decades: The President refused mercy please of nine death-row convicts, commuted death sentence in 2 cases.

Business Standard: New Delhi: Friday, April 05, 2013.

A Right to Information query has revealed that the President's office has rejected 74% of the 112 mercy petitions of death row convicts since 1981 to 2013.

The RTI plea was made by human rights NGO Asian Centre for Human Rights which has said that the President's office has been reduced to a rubber stamp of the Home Ministry.

President Pranab Mukherji recently refused the mercy pleas of nine death-row convicts as per the advice of the MHA. The President yesterday rejected mercy pleas in five cases while commuting death sentence in two cases as advised by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the NGO pointed out.

As per the RTI information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Asian Centre for Human Rights on 28 March 2013, nine mercy petitions were pending before the President of India and these include death-row convicts Jafar Ali (Uttar Pradesh), Dharam Pal (Haryana) Praveen Kumar (Karnataka), Sonia and Sanjeev (Haryana), Sunder Singh (Uttarakhand), Shivu and Jadeswamy (Karnataka) and B A Umesh (Karnataka), Balwant Singh Rajoana (Chandigarh) and Manganlal (Madhya Pradesh).

As per the RTI information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Asian Centre for Human Rights on 28 March 2013, since the Supreme Court laid down the rarest of rare case doctrine in the Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab case, the Presidents of India had considered 112 mercy pleas since 1981 to 4 April 2013, out of which 83 mercy petitions or 74% of the mercy petitions were rejected while mercy pleas of only 31 death row-convicts were commuted to life imprisonment.