Law Commission
GNLU Gandhinagar director Bimal Patel is now a member of the Law Commission of India, reported Live Law.
The Indian Express reported that the draft of the Law Commission report on the death penalty has recommended abolition of the death penalty immediately in all except terrorism cases, while hoping for a “swift and irreversible” “movement towards absolute abolition” of the death penalty.
The Ministry of Law and Justice Press Information Bureau (PIB) has issued a press release that this morning’s Indian Express story had incorrectly reported that the Law Commission had recommended in its draft report that the death penalty should be abolished for anything other than terrorism offences.
Death row convicts in India are mostly from the backward classes, religious minorities and economically weaker sections, reported the Times of India.
93.5 per cent of those sentenced to death for terror offences in the last 15 years were Dalits or religious minorities while 75 per cent of the total death row convicts were from the economically weaker sections, revealed the Law Commission of India’s interview with 373 death row convicts.
The commission, which is currently working on a proposal to abolish the death penalty from India’s statute books, had commissioned the practical study by national law university students who conducted the field interviews.
The study also revealed that 23 per cent of the interviewed convicts weren’t schooled, and most of the rest didn’t complete secondary education, weren’t allowed to attend court proceedings in their own cases and had inadequate interaction with the lawyers on the case.
Death row convicts in India are not permitted to do prison labour, are lodged in separate barracks and have psychological and other health care issues.
Only 1 per cent of undertrials can afford legal representation, senior advocate Prashant told TOI, while human rights lawyer and Supreme Court advocate on record Colin Gonsalves commented that the finding of 75 per cent arrived at in the study was the absolute bare minimum.
Between 2000 and 2015, 1,617 were sentenced to death by the trial courts – 42 per cent of them from UP and Bihar. The conviction rate at the stage of high courts and the SC dropped to 17.5 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively as most death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment or acquitted, added the TOI report.
The Law Commission of India - the law ministry’s three-year-term advisory wing on law making in India – may be made a permanent statutory body if recommendations of the current law secretary PK Malhotra are accepted by the parliamentary standing committee on law and personnel, reported Zee News.
The standing committee had expressed its concern over the slow pace at which Law Commission reports are being considered by the parliament and that a permanent term to the commission would enable producing a greater number of reports of better quality, according to the news report.
The law commission, which is in its 60th year and 20th term since it was established, has produced 256 reports so far, on laws that need to be introduced, amended and repealed, but has seen only around 45 per cent of its recommendations getting implemented, the current chairman justice AP Shah told Legally India and Mint* /. /Shah had asserted that the Law Commission was in need of statutory status.
Legal reform in India has been steered by dozens of its best legal minds since 1955, including legendary attorneys general M.C. Setalvad and C.K. Daphtary, justice P.B. Gajendragadkar, justice H.R. Khanna and justice V.R. Krishna Iyer.
Legal scholar Nick Robinson explores how (and if) the proposed new commercial fast-track courts might work.
The Law Commission chairman Justice AP Shah has recommended that the tenure of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) should be fixed to at least two years, and that the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) should consist of at least four judges, including the CJI as chairperson, reported The Hindu and the Indian Express.
The minimum CJI tenure should take effect after the current roster of sitting Supreme Court judges in line for the CJI post will have retired by August 2022, with Justice NV Ramana as the last CJI under the old system, recommended Shah in a note he sent to the law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Furthermore, he recommended that judges should have a three year “cooling off period” after retirement before they take up any government jobs. The JAC, apart from the four sitting Supreme Court judges, should also include the law minister, with an eminent jurist and an eminent member of civil society picked by the CJI, the prime minister and the leader of the Lok Sabha opposition.
Shah’s proposal was reportedly discussed in Monday’s meeting between the law ministry and top lawyers and retired judges.