Remission of sentence by appropriate government a critique of recent trends

Abstract

Clemency powers are available to the Heads of State and Appropriate Governments throughout the world, though the impact of clemency on sentence of the convicts may vary from country to country. In India, the clemency powers of the Head of State and the Appropriate Government are described in the Constitution of India and the Cr.PC respectively. Some other concepts akin to clemency like shortening of sentence, probational release of good conduct prisoners etc. also find mention in the State Prison Manuals and other Local and Special Laws enacted by the States for the purpose. Laws on clemency, prisons and prisoners are the most important laws so far as life and liberty of an individual are concerned. Different Benches of the Supreme Court have interpreted these laws on different occasions. In some of these cases, conflicting views have been presented before the Supreme Court in the arguments relating to the basic concepts. These conflicting views have been flagged in different paragraphs in this study. Though, some of the points of conflicts have been settled by the Constitutional Bench in UOI v. V.Sriharan (supra), some of gray areas still remain to be addressed. newline