President Pranab's First Challenge: Afsal Guru's Clemency

Bangalore: The race for India’s thirteenth presidential election finally came to an end when former finance minister and UPA presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee defeated his rival PA Sangama. Mukherjee won the sweepstakes with a massive margin bagging around 5.18 lakh worth of votes.

Mukherjee takes over from Pratibha Patel, India’s first women president. The swearing-in ceremony will be held in the parliament on July 25. With superior post come a whole lot of challenges.

Even before Pranab Mukherjee takes oath as the 13^th President of India, Shiv Sena has set before him its wish list, which includes rejecting the mercy petition of the parliament attack case convict Afsal Guru. Expressing his views, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackrey said, “we have many expectations from you. We urge you to reject Afsal Guru’s hearing plea and hang him,” as reported by Dainik Bhaskar. This will be one of the greatest challenges that the new president is going to face after resuming office, as the case has been one of India’s burning issues in the history of its politics. There are several pending cases related to capital punishment in the parliament which is one daunting task for any of the Presidents to take a decision on.

Deciding on the issue of capital punishment awarded by courts after all appeals, will be one of the most difficult tasks for Pranab Mukherjee. Any wrong decision on such delicate political issue may lead to political unrests. Even the outgoing president, Pratibha Patil has remained silent in some of the cases like that of Guru and has quietly sidestepped the issue.

But there is a twist of tale in Guru’s case. Some groups in Kashmir are against the death sentence and are demanding for life instead. So it is up to him to decide on these political cases until the end of the tenure and try to put an end to the controversy which has been looming over the Indian politics for a long time.