SC gives Center four weeks to decide Rajoana’s mercy plea

The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Union government four weeks to decide the long-pending mercy plea of ​​Balwant Singh Rajoana, a convict for the murder of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, even as the Center signaled ‘sensitivity’ on the part of the government. issue and said that the situation is currently not conducive to resolving the issue.

A bench comprising Justices Bhushan R Gavai, Prashant Kumar Mishra and KV Viswanathan postponed the hearing on Rajoana’s plea following submissions by Advocate General (SG) Tushar Mehta, appearing on behalf of the Union government.

“The matter is sensitive. Various authorities must be consulted. We need some more time,” Mehta told the bench. Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj, appearing for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), echoed the concerns and said, “The situation is still not conducive to a decision.”

The court accepted the Centre’s plea and adjourned the matter for four weeks.

Rajoana, a former police officer from Punjab, was sentenced to death in 2007 for his role as a reserve bomber in the suicide bombing outside the Punjab Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh on August 31, 1995. The bombing killed Beant Singh and 16 others. The Punjab and Haryana High Court upheld his death sentence in 2010.

In 2012, Rajoana was scheduled to be executed but it was postponed after the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) filed a plea for mercy on his behalf. Over the years, successive governments have cited national security concerns and the delicate political environment in Punjab as reasons for the delay in deciding the plea.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 2019 proposed to commute Rajoana’s sentence as a goodwill gesture on the occasion of Guru Nanak Dev’s 550th birth anniversary. However, the proposal was never formalized. In 2020, Rajoana approached the Supreme Court, challenging the prolonged delay in hearing his mercy plea.

During earlier hearings, the Supreme Court expressed dissatisfaction over the inordinate delay in resolving Rajoana’s mercy plea. During a hearing on November 18, the court underlined the need to continue the plea. It had even considered directing the President’s Secretary to expedite the decision within two weeks, but postponed the move after the Center sought more time. “The central government must act on this. Why not? It also requires the assistance and advice of the Centre,” the court said on the last date.

It had warned that it could reinstate its earlier directive to allow the president to decide on the plea if no progress was made by November 25. However, after the Centre’s latest submission, the matter has now been adjourned to December.

The issue of Rajoana’s release has significant political and national security implications. He was associated with the Babbar Khalsa, a militant Sikh separatist group responsible for violent activities during the insurgency in Punjab. His release is a sensitive issue for both the families of terror victims and the political dynamics in Punjab, raising concerns about the revival of pro-Khalistan sentiment.

Rajoana’s earlier petition challenging the Centre’s delay in deciding his commutation plea was decided by the Supreme Court in May 2023. The court noted that the MHA’s decision to defer decision on Rajoana’s mercy petition on grounds of national security and public order “actually amounts to a decision refusing to grant the same for the present”. Rather, it allowed the Center to consider his plea for mercy “in due course”.

A year later, Rajoana filed the current petition through lawyer Diksha Rai, maintaining that he is “neither a member of any anti-nationalist organization nor has he ever endorsed their views,” and therefore the commutation of his sentence cannot be stayed. by citing reasons of national security or public order. It added that the inordinate delay in the execution of a death row inmate’s sentence and a final decision on his mercy petition has been consistently recognized by the Supreme Court to invoke its powers under Article 32 to commute death sentences to life imprisonment.

“Keeping him in suspense while the consideration of his mercy petition by the Honorable President of India remains pending for years is an agony, which has caused adverse physical conditions and psychological stress to the petitioner, who has now been lodged in jail. for the past 28 years and 7 months, and confined in an 8-by-10-foot death penalty cell for the past 17 years,” the petition said.