When to hang Afzal? Politics has the answer

The delay in hanging in Afzal Guru, a death row convict in the Parliament attack case, puts the Congress in a difficult situation and gives the BJP a chance to score a point against the Government.
The Government is not time bound to decide on Afzal’s clemency petition, but politics doesn’t give it the luxury to delay. But should a decision on whether to hang a person or not be influenced by politics? CNN-IBN asked this to senior Supreme Court Colin Gonsalves, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi and BJP spokesperson Prakash Javedkar.

Gonsalves, who defended Afzal before the Delhi High Court, said it would be “cynical” if politics were to influence Afzal petition for clemency. “The record of Afzal’s trial is appalling. The lawyers he was given in the lower court either left him or didn’t want the case. Forget hanging him, the Supreme Court of any democratic country would have acquitted Afzal after looking at that record. If I was the President of India I would be so, so worried about sending a man to the gallows based on that kind of evidence,” he said.
“Afzal’s case is symbolic of the degeneration of our criminal justice system,” he said.
The BJP, which accuses the Congress of being soft on terror, will lose a point if the Government does actually reject Afzal’s clemency plea. Won’t it?
Not at all, said Javedkar. “The Supreme Court has awarded the punishment, so why is the Government delaying it. Based on the information I have I know that the file on the clemency plea is gathering dust in the Delhi government for the last 14 months. The file is stuck on one table,” he said.
“The issue (delay in hanging Afzal) is not an electoral issue but that of national security. The BJP’s permanent campaign is to safeguard the nation—it has nothing to do with elections,” said Javedkar.
How long will the Government take before it decides on Afzal’s clemency plea? Congress leader Singhvi, a lawyer, said the issue was being “wrongly put”. “The Supreme Court has punished Afzal, but separate from it and hovering above it is the President’s clemency power. The Congress stands for exercise of that power according to the sequencing of the way of the file (on the clemency plea) moves,” he said.
“Unlike the BJP we are going to exercise that power properly. The BJP wants to foreclose that power and says use that power in one way alone. BJP governments from 1998 to 2004—six years—delayed decisions on clemency petitions in 19 important cases which includes the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. We have just had one and half years in the Afzal case. We will take a decision and it won’t take that long,” he said.
But does the Congress fear that Afzal would become an election issue? “That is just sensationalism and media speculation. This is not a political issue at all—we don’t hang or leave a person depending on the next election around the corner. What I or anybody else feels about Afzal is immaterial. He has a constitutional right to ask for clemency—reject or accept it—but the BJP wants to deny him that right,” said Singhvi.