BJP suggests fast-tracking Afzal Guru's mercy plea

Continuing to target the government over the Afzal Guru issue, BJP today challenged it to show any legal basis for its decision to take up mercy petitions of death row convicts in the order they were
submitted.

"I challenge the ministry of home affairs to show any legal basis that mercy petitions have to be dealt with in a sequence in which they have been submitted," BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.

He said if the case of Mumbai attack convict Ajmal Kasab could be put on fast-track, a similar action could be taken in deciding the mercy petition of the Parliament attack convict.

Home minister P Chidambaram had contended that Guru's mercy petition was the 22nd among 28 pending with the government. "The government would take up the petitions in the order in which they came up and recommend whether they should be accepted or rejected and inform the president accordingly," he had said.

Prasad alleged that vote bank considerations was the prime reason for lack of any stern action in the Afzal Guru case.

BJP president Nitin Gadkari had yesterday demanded an apology from prime minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson
Sonia Gandhi for the delay in hanging Afzal Guru.