-The Hindustan Times Nearly 18 months after he brought corruption in sharp focus with his demand for a lokpal, Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday launched the Aam Aadmi Party, to take on the well entrenched political class on its own turf. The meeting was attended by 320 founding members of the party, which promises to provide more power to gram sabhas and revive the slogan of swaraj (self-rule), which was effectively used...

-The Hindu By not informing Ajmal Kasab of his right to seek a judicial review of the rejection of his mercy petition, the UPA government has committed a serious wrong The hurried and secretive hanging of Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab is both an administrative wrong and a constitutional impropriety. The Manmohan Singh government and the UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, owe it to the nation and the whole world to explain why their...

-The Economic Times The government did not waste much time in recommending to the President that Ajmal Kasab's clemency plea be rejected as the Supreme Court had said three months ago that if death sentence was to be imposed only in "one in a million case" , then this was the one which deserved capital punishment. The court, upholding the decision of the trial court which was affirmed by the Bombay high...

-Outlook The Supreme Court has said its Constitution bench's landmark judgement of 1980 on criterion for imposing death penalty needs a "fresh look" as there has been "no uniformity" in following its principles on what constitutes "the rarest of rare" cases. "This court has not endorsed the approach of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in Bachan Singh (case). However, this approach has been adopted in several decisions. This needs a fresh look. In...

-The Hindu By not publicly disclosing the reasons for rejecting Ajmal Kasab’s mercy petition, Pranab Mukherjee missed an excellent opportunity to contribute to the rule of law President Pranab Mukherjee’s decision to reject the mercy petition submitted by the lone convict in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, is an instance of how public perceptions about a convict’s guilt can camouflage the government’s duty to explain the decision. The...