-The Indian Express Under Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, individuals in lawful custody of the police and those serving a sentence of imprisonment after conviction cannot vote. The Election Commission (EC) has set up a seven-member committee to explore the possibility of lifting the ban on voting for prisoners. Under Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, individuals in lawful custody of the police...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Capital punishment in India: 385 persons identified as prisoners on death row
-The Indian Express First-of-its-kind report provides 360-degree view of the administration of capital punishment — who gets it, and what it is to live in death’s shadow. Reason and scope of Study The National Law University’s Death Penalty Research Project has prepared a socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India, using statistics and case studies, to help create a resource for an in-depth understanding of the administration of the death penalty...
More »Delay in hearing appeals as good as justice denied
-The Times of India The wheels of justice, the saying goes, grind slowly but grind exceedingly fine. In the Indian context, it would be more true to say that they grind so exceedingly slowly that there can be nothing fine about the outcome. When we set out to look at instances of gross miscarriage of justice, we found several cases where people were convicted of heinous crimes and locked up for...
More »Nearly one-third of mercy petitions commuted to life since Independence -Himanshi Dhawan
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: About one -third of all mercy petitions in Independent India have been commuted to life imprisonment with a new report stating that 3534 of 5106 petitions were rejected while 1572 were considered favourably. This is the first such estimate of mercy petitions filed since Independence and is based on several sources accessed by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in its report Status of Mercy...
More »Experts dispute premise of juvenile law amendments -Vidya Venkat
-The Hindu As the proposed amendments to the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, passed in the Lok Sabha on May 7, faces the Rajya Sabha hurdle, several child rights experts have begun to challenge its premise for treating adolescents accused of heinous crimes on a par with adults. Their primary contention is that the basis for proposing such amendments for stringent action is flawed and unlikely to act as a deterrent. Victim, not...
More »