Reject Afzal Guru's mercy petition: BJP

With President Pratibha Patil rejecting the mercy petition of two convicts on death row, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday raised the pitch for the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and said the government was not bound to go by sequence while dealing with pending pleas.

"When would Afzal Guru be hanged and how long will his mercy petition be delayed? On August 4, 2005, the Supreme Court had rejected his appeal. It has been six years since then. The review petition was rejected on May 14, 2008," BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

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The President had on Thursday rejected the mercy petitions of Devinder Singh Bhullar, convicted in the Youth Congress office bombing in New Delhii, and M N Das, who killed a person while being out on parole.

Prasad maintained that the government was not bound by law to go by the order in which mercy petitions were received."Which law authorises the Government of India that consideration of mercy petitions would only be in sequence. Cases of serious crime are fast tracked. The Supreme Court has fast tracked the 2G case though thousands of cases are pending. Afzal Guru's case was fast tracked," he said.

The BJP maintained that had the designs of Guru succeeded during the Parliament attack of December 13, 2001, then nearly the entire top political leadership of the country would have been killed.

"You cannot go inside Parliament even with a small blade. Had even one terrorist entered with an AK-47, the entire leadership of all the political parties would have been killed," Prasad said.

He recalled the controversy a few months back when then home minister Shivraj Patil had allegedly asked Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit to delay action on Guru's file.

"It is a copybook politics of vote bank politics. The BJP demands that the mercy petition should be rejected at the earliest and action be taken against Afzal Guru as confirmed by repeated decisions of the Supreme Court," Prasad said.