The Hindu Business Line : President sets an ominous precedent

Did the President, in taking the unprecedented step of meeting the wife, son and mother of one sentenced to death for mounting a murderous attack on Parliament, act as per his own judgment and discretion or after getting a nod from the Prime Minister or the Government?

Only those who had tried to get an appointment to meet the President will know how difficult it is, the chance being almost nil for ordinary citizens whose first servant he is supposed to be.

How come, then, the same President, within a few hours of the asking, gives an appointment to the wife, son and mother of one whose conviction and sentence of death by hanging for mounting a murderous attack on Parliament, no less, had been upheld by the Supreme Court itself? Not only does he give the appointment with surprising promptitude to the family members and their two counsel, but he also makes his guests (for, I am sure, tea and snacks would have also been served) feel at home and takes abundant interest in the future plans of the condemned convict's son.

Neither the Constitution nor convention nor custom nor any precedent in India and other countries requires a President to give a hearing to the convict's kin and cohorts as part of the process of deciding on a petition for mercy or commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment. In Britain in the early part of last century, Sir Roger Casement, the Irish revolutionary, who was also an MP, was sentenced to death and the request of his friends for an interview to plead his case was refused by the Prime Minister of the day.

In India, in fact, the President has no functional role to play at all in such a decision: It is the Union Home Ministry which examines the contents of the petition in the first instance and makes a recommendation to the Cabinet which, thereafter, tenders to the President its advice by which he is bound. In the circumstances, it is really odd that a President should go to such lengths to patiently hear out the plea of the family and lawyers of a dreaded mastermind whose heinous plot, but for the dedication and sacrifice of their own lives by the security personnel, might have ended in the mowing down of dozens of MPs in one of history's most horrendous bloodbaths in the very heart of India's vibrant democracy. It becomes all the more queer when the President, for aught anyone knows, has not been showing the same degree of solicitude by inviting the families of security and armed services (of which he is the Supreme Commander) personnel to Rashtrapati Bhavan and following up on the nature and adequacy of the relief provided and the progress of the cases against the militants.

The question also arises whether the President, in taking the unprecedented step acted as per his own judgment and discretion or after getting a nod from the Prime Minister or the Government. If the President acting on his own volition is bad, clearance by the Government makes it worse since it becomes a party to whatever pernicious consequence arising out of the disposal of the petition.

Wrong signal

Whatever it is, the ominous precedent set by Mr Kalam will cast a dark shadow on the polity and bedevil all rational thinking on the strategy and approaches to be adopted towards terrorism and terrorists. At the very least, from now on there can be no retribution for any jihadi's act until after the President has a sitting with his family and friends and ascertains their wishes on how the Government should proceed. In addition, it vitiates the process of decision making on the mercy petition by sending a wrong signal to those processing it about the intention of the Head of State and thereby making the integrity and objectivity of the process questionable. For, whatever way the petition is now decided, it is going to cause acute embarrassment.

It is but human nature that the very fact of the granting of the interview to the family by the President would have raised the hopes of a favourable outcome in the minds of not only the family but also the sympathisers of the convict. The militants too would be expecting the Indian state to buckle under the blackmail. If the petition is rejected and the death sentence is to be carried out, leaving aside the trauma inflicted on the family members by the dashing of their hopes, the jihadis and their covert and overt collaborators will stick at nothing to create a situation in the Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India which would be far more venomous and deadly than before.

Government by impulse

If, on the other hand, the President takes a favourable view of the petition, the decision will be mired in the miasma of all sorts of imputations of motives and purpose, and in any case, will severely undercut the sanctity of the judicial process and make a mockery of the fight against terrorism in which untold number of the security and armed forces personnel have laid down their lives.

Whether it is the nuclear deal, or dealings with Pakistan, or Indo-Pak joint mechanism on terrorism, or the case of Mohammed Afzal Guru, the common thread is the lack of the ability of the Government to thoroughly think through all the implications and ramifications of the course of action. A Government working by impulse and knee-jerk reflexes and not by applying its mind comprehensively to the issue at hand is apt both to trip itself and to betray national interest.