NEW DELHI, Oct 11: India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday clipped the president’s power to pardon convicts on death row.

The ruling came in the midst of a national debate on the death penalty after the family of a Kashmiri Muslim, sentenced to hang for plotting a 2001 attack on parliament, appealed to President Abdul Kalam to spare his life.

Powers to grant pardon were subject to judicial review if there was an “extraneous consideration in the exercise of that power”, the court ruled.

“Undue considerations of caste, religion and political loyalty are prohibited from being grounds for grant of clemency,” Supreme Court judges Arijit Pasayat and Justice S. H. Kapadia said, according to a Press Trust of India report.

“The power to grant pardon is a prerogative power and not an act of grace,” the ruling said.

It came amid appeals for clemency by human rights groups for Mohammed Afzal Guru, who was ordered to be hanged on Oct 20.

A spokesman for Mr Kalam said the president had forwarded Guru’s clemency petition to India’s law and home ministries for their advice.

“After the two ministries send us their views, then President Kalam could seek further advice from constitutional experts,” the spokesman said.—AFP