Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: 12 November 2022 at 20:37 IST
According to the Supreme Court, a High Court cannot wield both its judicial review authority and its power of remission at the same time.
In this instance, the murder offender had already served 14 years and 6 months of his original sentence and 12 years and 9 months of remission when he asked to be released early. As a result of the authorities’ continued inaction, he approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court and filed a writ suit.
On the grounds that the request for remission was covered by the policy, the High Court granted the request itself.
The State of Haryana challenged this order before the Supreme Court, arguing that the judge should not have exercised his or her authority in this case and should simply have instructed that the subject of remission be considered by the relevant authorities and/or set a deadline for making a decision.
The bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abhay S. Oka stated, “We are in agreement with the contention of learned counsel for the petitioner in this regard that it was not within the area of judicial review for the learned judge to have himself used the power of remission.”
The court did remark that the offender had gained weight nine months prior, thus returning him to custody and having the State examine the plea for remission would be ineffective.
Despite the fact that the court stated, “We do not find the exercise of authority in the impugned judgement to be in accordance with law, we would not like to interfere under Article 136 of the Constitution of India insofar as it would not be appropriate to put the respondent back in custody given that he has now received the benefit of remission.”
In another ruling, Ram Chander v. State of Chhattisgarh, the Supreme Court noted that while it might evaluate a government decision to see if it was arbitrary, it could not usurp that authority and provide remission on its own. It was noted that the authorities may be instructed to re-examine the convict’s case if the executive’s use of power is proven to be arbitrary.