{"id":71112,"date":"2020-11-27T18:08:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T12:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=71112"},"modified":"2021-05-10T16:13:40","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:43:40","slug":"pardoning-power-of-president-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/pardoning-power-of-president-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Pardoning power of president in india"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Context<\/strong>: Recently, US President Donald Trump exercised his powers under the Constitution to pardon Michael Flynn, his former National Security Advisor<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the extent of the US President\u2019s power to pardon?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Constitutional right<\/strong>: The President of the US has the\u00a0<strong>constitutional<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>right to pardon<\/strong>\u00a0or commute sentences related to federal crimes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>No restriction<\/strong>: The US Supreme Court has held that this power is\u00a0<strong>\u201cgranted without limit\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0and cannot be restricted by Congress.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Discretionary power<\/strong>: Clemency is a broad executive power, and is discretionary. The President is not answerable for his pardons, and does not have to provide a reason for issuing one.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What are the limitations?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution says all Presidents shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States,\u00a0<strong>except in Cases of Impeachment.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The power only applies to\u00a0<strong>federal crimes and not state crimes.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>T<\/strong>hose pardoned by the President can still be tried under the\u00a0<strong>laws of individual states.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is the frequency of usage of pardoning power during different Presidents?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2017, Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of being in\u00a0<strong>contempt of court<\/strong>\u00a0for ignoring a federal judge\u2019s order to stop arresting immigrants solely on the suspicion that they were residing in the US illegally.<\/li>\n<li>In four years, Trump has granted pardons to 29 people (including Flynn) and 16 commutations.<\/li>\n<li>President Barack Obama had, during his eight-year tenure, issued 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations.<\/li>\n<li>The only other President who can be compared with Trump for infrequent use of the power is George H W Bush, who granted 77 clemency requests during his one-term tenure.<\/li>\n<li>The highest number of clemency grants by a US President (3,796) came during Franklin D Roosevelt\u2019s 12-year tenure, which coincided with World War II.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How Indian President pardons?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Not discretionary:\u00a0<\/strong>the President has to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers while deciding mercy pleas. These include\u00a0<strong>Maru Ram vs Union of India in 1980, and Dhananjoy Chatterjee vs State of West Bengal in 1994.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Article 72:<\/strong>\u00a0the President shall have the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence where the sentence is a sentence of death.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Article 161:<\/strong>\u00a0the Governor too has pardoning powers, but these do not extend to death sentences.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Executive power with defined procedure<\/strong>: The President cannot exercise his power of pardon independent of the government. The mercy plea is forwarded to the Home Ministry, seeking the Cabinet\u2019s advice. The Ministry forwards this to the concerned state government based on the reply, it formulates its advice on behalf of the Council of Ministers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Final decision making:<\/strong>\u00a0Article 74(1) empowers President to return cabinet\u2019s advice for reconsideration once. If the Council of Ministers decides against any change, the President has no option but to accept it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: Recently, US President Donald Trump exercised his powers under the Constitution to pardon Michael Flynn, his former National Security Advisor What is the extent of the US President\u2019s power to pardon? Constitutional right: The President of the US has the\u00a0constitutional\u00a0right to pardon\u00a0or commute sentences related to federal crimes. No restriction: The US Supreme Court&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/pardoning-power-of-president-in-india\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pardoning power of president in india<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":71118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230],"tags":[1395],"class_list":["post-71112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","tag-po_8","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Pardon-powers.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1","views":{"total":103,"cached_at":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}