📰 Perarivalan, Rajiv Gandhi case convict, released by Supreme Court citing extraordinary powers
The Supreme Court used Article 142 of the Constitution that grants it extraordinary powers to do complete justice, to release Perarivalan, a Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convict, lodged in prison for over 30 years.
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday invoked its extraordinary powers to do complete justice under Article 142 of the Constitution and ordered the release of A.G. Perarivalan in former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
•A Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao, in its judgment, took into consideration Perarivalan’s long incarceration for over 30 years to order his release. Perarivalan is currently on bail. His death penalty had earlier been committed to life sentence for murder. Terrorism charges were earlier withdrawn.
•The court held that the Tamil Nadu Council of Ministers’ advice on September 9, 2018 to pardon Perarivalan was binding on the Governor under Article 161 (Governor’s power of clemency) of the Constitution.
•It said the long delay and the Governor’s reluctance to take a call on the pardon plea has compelled the court to employ its constitutional powers under Article 142 to do justice to Perarivalan.
•The court dismissed the Centre’s argument that the President exclusively, and not the Governor, had the power to grant pardon in a case under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code, saying this contention would render Article 161 a “dead-letter” and create an extraordinary situation whereby pardons granted by Governors in murder cases for the past 70 years would be rendered invalid
•Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, for Tamil Nadu, had argued that the prospect of the court waiting for the President’s decision on the mercy plea, as put forward by the Centre, was “completely absurd”. Mr. Dwivedi, along with Tamil Nadu Additional Advocate General Amit Anand Tiwari and advocate Joseph Aristotle, had said federalism would go for a toss if that was allowed by the court.
•The court protected federalism by holding that States had the power to advice and aid the Governor in case of pleas of pardon under Article 161 made by convicts in murder cases.
•In the long years of litigation, the Centre, had initially assured the Supreme Court that the Governor would take a call on Perarivalan’s pardon plea, only to suddenly change tack in November 2020 to say that it was the President, under advice of the Centre, who was authorised to decide the plea.
•The Centre had banked on a Constitution Bench judgment in Union of India versus V. Sriharan in December 2015, to argue that Section 432(7)(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC) gave primacy to the Union and not the States when the case was tried under a law to which the executive power of the Union extended to.
•An affidavit filed by the Ministry of Home Affairs last year had submitted that the President of India was the “appropriate competent authority” to deal with Perarivalan’s request for freedom.
•The Ministry’s short affidavit had said “His Excellency the Governor of Tamil Nadu considered all the facts on record and after perusal of the relevant documents, recorded that the Honourable President of India is the appropriate competent authority to deal with the request for remittance vide his order dated January 25, 2021. The proposal received by the Central government will be processed in accordance with law”.
•However, Perarivalan’s lawyers, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Prabu Ramasubramanian, used the same Sriharan judgment of the court to counter that the power of State or Central governments to remit sentences under Section 432 Cr.PC and the clemency power of the President or the Governor could not be equated with each other.
•“Section 432 was a creature of the Code (Cr.PC). Articles 72 (power of President to grant pardon) or 161, on the other hand, was a high prerogative vested by the Constitution in the highest functionaries of the Union and the States,” Mr. Sankaranarayanan had argued.
•The constitutional power of pardon of the President or Governor was “untouchable and unapproachable and cannot suffer the vicissitudes of simple legislative processes”, Mr. Sankaranarayanan had explained from the Sriharan judgment.
•He had argued that the convict was free to choose either the Governor or the President to apply for pardon.
•The Centre had also highlighted that the case against Perarivalan concerned the assassination of none other than a former Prime Minister. Forty-three other people had sustained serious injuries in the bomb explosion at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991.
•But Perarivalan had contended that his role in the crime extended to supplying two nine-volt batteries without the knowledge of what it was going to be used for. He said his confession under the lapsed TADA to a police officer was not valid evidence.
•He said he was a “19-year-old boy when his mother handed him over to the CBI... and now has lost all his prime youth in prison, that too, in death row under solitary confinement for more than 16 years”. He said his “aged mother and father were waiting for their only son to join them at least in the last years of their life”.
•Earlier, Perarivalan had sought an order from the Supreme Court to stay his life sentence till the CBI-led multidisciplinary authority’s inconclusive probe into the larger conspiracy behind the assassination was completed.
•He had described his case as “unique” and had related the harsh circumstances under which he had pursued an education in prison. He had said his health had taken a severe beating from the effects of “death row syndrome”.
It will take effect from April 2023
•The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the National Policy on Biofuels, 2018, to advance the date by which fuel companies have to increase the percentage of ethanol in petrol to 20%, from 2030 to 2025. The policy of introducing 20% ethanol will take effect from April 1, 2023.
•A press statement from the government said the new policy would allow more feed stock for producing biofuel and foster the development of indigenous technologies.
•Also read | What is Ethanol-blended petrol? Should we be concerned?
•A 2021 report by the NITI Aayog said that “immense benefits” could accrue to the country by 20% ethanol blending by 2025, such as saving ₹30,000 crore of foreign exchange per year, increased energy security, lowered carbon emissions, better air quality, self-reliance, better use of damaged foodgrains, increased farmers’ incomes and greater investment opportunities.
•India achieved 9.45% ethanol blending as on March 13, 2022, according to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG). The Centre projects that this will reach 10% by the end of financial year 2022. The government first announced its plans of advancing the 20% blending target in December 2020.
Impact on engines
•A 10% blending of petrol does not require major changes to engines but a 20% blend could require some changes and may even drive up the prices of vehicles. A greater percentage of blending could also mean more land being diverted for water-intensive crops such as sugar cane, which the government currently subsidises.
•The NITI Aayog projects an ethanol demand of 10.16 billion litres by 2025, based on the adoption of vehicles. The current ethanol production capacity in India of 4.26 billion litres derives from molasses-based distilleries, and 2.58 billion litres from grain-based distilleries. This is expected to expand to 7.6 billion litres and 7.4 billion litres respectively, and will require six million tonnes of sugar and 16.5 million tonnes of grains per annum by 2025.
•The increased allocation of land also puts into question the actual reduction in emissions that blending ethanol with petrol brings about.
📰 The UN report that highlights India’s vulnerability to drought
More than a billion people around the world were affected by drought in 2000-19, making it the second-worst disaster after flooding.
•The story so far: A United Nations report has revealed that many parts of India fall under the list of regions that are vulnerable to drought globally. The report also stated that India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reduced by 2 to 5 per cent between 1998 and 2017 due to severe droughts in the country. Globally, droughts in the same period caused economic losses of approximately $124 billion.
•These and other global findings centred on drought were collated in the Drought in Numbers, 2022 report presented by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
•The Drought in Numbers report is a collection of data on the effects of droughts on our ecosystem and how they can be mitigated through efficient planning for the future. The report also helps inform negotiations surrounding key decisions by the UNCCD’s 197 member parties at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15), currently underway in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Drought, land restoration, and related aspects such as land rights, gender equality and youth empowerment are among the top considerations at COP15.
•The number and duration of droughts around the world has increased by an alarming 29% since 2000.
•“An upward trajectory in the duration of droughts and the severity of impacts, not only affecting human societies but also the ecological systems upon which the survival of all life depends, including that of our own species,” UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said.
What is COP15?
•UNCCD’s COP15 focuses on desertification, land degradation, and drought, with the theme for the conference being “Land. Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity.” The conference has brought together government representatives, private sector members, and civil society stakeholders to ensure that land continues to benefit present and future generations.
•It proposes to tackle “the interconnected challenges of land degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss” as we move into the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
•The UNCCD’s 197 parties, which includes 196 member States as well as the European Union, are expected to brainstorm sustainable ideas to further land restoration and drought resilience, focusing on “future-proofing land use.” The UNCCD envisions restoring one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030, creating a land degradation-neutral world.
The most pressing concerns
•According to World Bank estimates, drought conditions can force up to 216 million people to migrate by 2050. Other factors at play along with drought could be water scarcity, declining crop productivity, rise in sea levels, and overpopulation.
•Weather, climate and water hazards have accounted for 50 per cent of all disasters and 45 per cent of all reported deaths since 1970, World Meteorological Organisation data has revealed. Nine in ten of these deaths have occurred in developing countries.
•Between 2020 and 2022, 23 countries have faced drought emergencies. These are Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, United States, and Zambia. According to the report, climate change alone will cause 129 countries to experience an increase in drought exposure in the next few decades.
Human impact
•More than a billion people around the world were affected by drought in 2000-19, making it the second-worst disaster after flooding. Africa was the worst hit, with 134 droughts, of which 70 occurred in East Africa. The World Health Organisation has noted that approximately 55 million people globally are directly affected by droughts annually, making it the most serious hazards to livestock and crops in almost every part of the world.
•The impact of drought is, however, not uniform across genders. Research shows that women and girls in emerging and developing countries suffer more in terms of education levels, nutrition, health, sanitation, and safety as a result of droughts. The burden of water collection also disproportionately falls on women (72 per cent) and girls (9 per cent). The report notes that they may spend up to 40 per cent of their caloric intake fetching water.
•In 2022, over 2.3 billion people are facing water stress. Almost 160 million children are exposed to severe and prolonged droughts.
Environmental aspects
•According to the report, if predictions are correct and global warming reaches 3° C by 2100, drought losses could be five times higher than today’s levels. The largest increase in drought losses is projected in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic regions of Europe.
•Australia’s megadrought in 2019-2020 contributed to “megafires” resulting in one of the most extensive losses of habitat for threatened species. About three billion animals were killed or displaced in the Australian wildfires. On a related note, 84 per cent of all terrestrial ecosystems are threatened by changing and intensifying wildfires.
•According to a 2017 report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the percentage of plants affected by drought has more than doubled in the last 40 years. Around 12 million hectares of land are lost each year due to drought and desertification.
📰 Law and public opinion: On Perarivalan release
The release of Perarivalan is no endorsement of any claim of his innocence
•The Supreme Court has invoked its extraordinary power to order the release of A.G. Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, for whose freedom his mother, many political parties and vast sections of public opinion have been campaigning for years. The suicide bombing that took the life of Rajiv Gandhi, along with that of 15 others, including nine police personnel, on “Tamil soil” caused a great deal of revulsion in the State, but this sentiment abated with the passage of time. Perarivalan drew much public sympathy, largely due to the fact that he was only 19 when he got embroiled in the assassination plot and later revelations that a portion of his confessional statement was improved by a police officer to link his purchase of a battery to the one used in the belt bomb that was used in the suicide bombing. But essentially, the verdict of the three-member Bench is an indictment of the disregard for federal norms in the deliberate inaction that Raj Bhavan displayed when presented with a Cabinet advice to release them in 2018. Going by the Union government’s arguments, one can discern that it was the Centre’s guiding hand that was responsible for the delay. The then Governor had referred the Cabinet advice to the President for a decision. The Centre, too, argued, that cases involving murder under the IPC came under the President’s exclusive jurisdiction in matters of remission of life sentences. The Court has put an end to all doubts by holding that the Governor is bound by the State Cabinet’s advice when acting under Article 161 of the Constitution, that his reference to the President was “inimical to the scheme of the Constitution” and that remission remains firmly under the State’s jurisdiction in this case.
•Even when a Constitution Bench, while resolving legal questions over the statutory power of remission under the Cr.P.C., held that the release of these convicts would require the Centre’s concurrence, it had made it clear that the constitutional powers of the President (Article 72) and the Governor (Article 161) “remain untouched”. In the light of this, and the position that remission powers are exercised solely on Cabinet advice, there was no infirmity in the State’s recommendation to the Governor in 2018 for their release. While the Bench has done well to put an end to doubts about the Governor’s remission power and the manner of its exercise, a sticking point remains. Nothing has been said on what should be done when the absence of any time-frame for the President or the Governor is cynically exploited to indefinitely delay executive decisions. It is impractical for every matter to be escalated to the point that the Supreme Court needs to invoke its extraordinary powers under Article 142. However, the judgment should not be seen as any endorsement of the claims of innocence of the convicts in the dastardly conspiracy. And whether governments should recommend remission on the basis of public opinion remains a question to ponder.
📰 Delimitation fallout needs no political forecasting
Electoral sinew to one set of States while depleting representative muscle to another will fuel north-south India tensions
•There was a time, not all that long ago, when English speakers in the south of India routinely referred to our north as ‘Upper India’. This sense of the north’s upper-ness included, somewhere in its folds, a sense of the north having the upper hand in the affairs of the nation, of being bigger, more populous and, therefore, the more dominant of the two. Being ‘upper’ also encased within its meaning the fact of the nation’s capital, Calcutta and later Delhi, being ‘up’ there, with Simla as the nation’s summer capital ‘up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky’.
The political summit
•The Imperial Legislative Council, with its Central Legislative Assembly as the Lower House and the Council of State as the Upper House, being located in Delhi pushed that upperness further up. Seeing persons of the eminence of Muhammad Habibullah, A. Rangaswami Iyengar, S. Srinivasa Iyengar, Omandur Ramaswami Reddiar, Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Tanguturi Prakasam, Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, T.S. Avinashilingam Chettiar, V.V. Giri, S. Satyamurti, N.G. Ranga, C.N. Muthuranga Mudaliar, T.S.S. Rajan, K. Santhanam, M.C. Rajah, the Raja of Bobbili and N. Sivaraj ‘move’ diligently to Delhi by up-bound trains, for legislative sessions, could not but reinforce the perceived image of India’s north as India’s political summit. Later, the Constituent Assembly with N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, Rajaji, Jerome D' Souza, K. Kamaraj, O.V. Alagesan, C. Subramaniam, V.I. Munuswamy Pillai, in it, and some remarkable south Indian women — Ammu Swaminathan, G. Durgabai, Annie Mascarene, Dakshayani Velayudham — and successive Lok Sabhas and the Rajya Sabha drawing Members of Parliament of the stature of A.K. Gopalan, T. Nagi Reddy, C.N. Annadurai, P. Sundarayya, Panampilly Govinda Menon, C.H. Mohammed Koya, M. Ruthnaswamy, K.T.K. Thangamani and Era Sezhiyan, going to Delhi, by air rather than by rail, of course, continued the ‘India’s north as India’s peak’ image. Needless to say, that ‘peak’ was scaled in terms of outstanding legislative performance by these men and women.
Congress and Left symmetry
•The Indian National Congress, however, it needs to be noted, was from the very start, aware of the need for India’s regions to be seen as equal, bereft of any asymmetry. Its very third session after Bombay (1885) and Calcutta (1886) was held in Madras (1887, and many times later), followed by several Congress sessions of note taking place in the south — Amaravati/Amraoti (1897), Coconada (1923), Belgaum (1924), and the seminal one, at Avadi (Madras) in 1955, attended by Yugoslavia’s President Marshal Josip Broz Tito, where the party adopted ‘a socialistic pattern of society’ as its avowed objective.
•The All India Kisan Sabha, the peasant wing of the Communist Party of India, likewise, which had first met in a ‘founder-conference’ in Lucknow in 1936, met at its fifth session in 1940 in Palasa, Srikakulam, then in Madras Presidency and now in Andhra, under the chairmanship of Rahul Sankrityayan. It has, since, met very pointedly in southern venues as much as in northern.
•These considered arrangements embody the opening Article 1 of our Constitution: India, that is Bharat.
•That phrase makes India, Bharat and Bharat, India — one belonging to and in fact, being the other.
•But the question needs to be asked, today: What makes India, ‘India’, or Bharat, Bharat?
•And why, today?
Impact of delimitation
•Because four years from now, India’s electoral democracy will stand on an existential crossroads. A delimitation of the constituencies that will elect Members of the Lok Sabha, following the population figures returned by the next decennial Census, is to take place in 2026.
•A good thing! We cannot have, should not have, the same number of Members of Parliament — 543 — representing a vastly increased population in the Lok Sabha. Mathematically speaking, the higher the number of people per constituency, the lower the impact each voter has on parliamentary representation — clearly an undesirable situation. The Constitution of India recognised this and provided for a periodic, Census-linked re-arrangement of constituencies to make their representation in Parliament tenable. More people should mean more MPs. Simple, sound logic. But simple, sound politics also? No.
•A population-based marking out or re-arrangement of constituencies, as envisaged in Article 82 of the Constitution, will have the effect of giving more MPs to the States and Union Territories that have let their numbers grow, and will give markedly less MPs to those that have held their numbers in some check. Realising the anomaly that a delimitation based on Census data would cause, a delimitation freeze was put in position by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976. This was extended by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee through the 84th Amendment. It is this extension that is to end in 2026, placing us at a crossroads.
What the data show
•What is the way forward?
•Considering the Census data for 2011, almost half (48.6%) of our population (of approximately 1.38 billion) is contributed by the States of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. According to the projections made by the Technical Group formed by National Commission on Population, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for 2011-36, Uttar Pradesh’s share in India’s population would see an increase by 1.74 percentage points (from 15.30% in 1971 to a projected 17.03% in 2026), Bihar’s by 1.59 percentage points (from 7.69% in 1971 to projected 9.28% in 2026) and Rajasthan’s by 1.17 percentage points (from 4.70% in 1971 to projected 5.87% in 2026).
•Tamil Nadu’s share in India’s population would see a decline by 2.08 percentage points (from 7.52% in 1971 to projected 5.44% in 2026), undivided Andhra’s by 1.46 percentage points (from 7.94% in 1971 to a projected 6.48% in 2026), and Kerala’s by 1.36 percentage points (from 3.89% in 1971 to a projected 2.54% in 2026). Interestingly, West Bengal’s will also decline by 1.03 percentage points (from 8.08% in 1971 to a projected 7.05% in 2026).
•Re-arranging and standardising the number of people per constituency through the scheduled delimitation exercise will inevitably lead to a reduced representation for States that have managed to stabilise their populations, and to a higher representation for States that have not stabilised their populations.
•It needs no political forecasting to see that emotions will be strained by a delimitation exercise that adds electoral sinew to one set of States, while depleting representative muscle to another. The upperness syndrome, which has now become a thing of the past, should not come back in the guise of delimitation. We cannot afford a tension on the north-south front in addition to those we already have.
There are alternatives
•There are two alternatives before us: one, we go in for another freeze, this time not for any specific period but for until all States have achieved population stabilisation. Two, we request demographic and statistical experts to devise a mathematical model along the lines of the ‘Cambridge Compromise’ based on a mathematically equitable “formula” for the apportionment of the seats of the European Parliament between the member-states. That formula cannot be applied to our situation as such but needs to be studied so as to customise it for our needs.
•Given the complications of the Indian demographic scene, and the distorting shadow that Census data may cast on the delimitation process, I would say the first option is the more persuasive one. The population-stabilising States of India that is Bharat, which include all the southern States, must continue to enrich our legislative and parliamentary processes as they have been doing since the time of the Imperial Legislative Council, with no penalties having to be paid for their sense of responsibility. We need to limit population, not representation.
