Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated April 11, 1957: Minister justifies action

Mr. V.R. Krishna Aiyar, Law Minister of Kerala, told pressmen in Trivandrum on April 9 that the State Government had taken the definite stand that the Ministry had the power to commute or remit sentences. On the statements questioning the Government's powers in this regard, he said a point raised was that under Article 161 of the Constitution, the Governor had the power to do so. He said it was a provision where the Governor was bound to act under the advice of his Ministers. There was no basis for anybody to imagine that the Governor and the Ministry disagreed on this matter. Sections 401 and 402 of the Criminal Procedure Code also empowered the State Government to exercise the powers of commutation and remission. Even in cases pending before courts, the Government could exercise powers of remission, reprieve or commutation. In a situation fairly analogous to this, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Andhra State, Mr. T. Prakasam, a Congress Chief Minister, ordered a wholesale release of prisoners. This Government, he added, did not go to that extreme as Mr. Prakasam. "We have struck a golden mean to celebrate the coming into existence of the first popular Ministry in the new State of Kerala." The commutation was not to mark the assumption of a Communist Ministry but the coming into office of the first popular Ministry in the new State of Kerala. Meanwhile, commenting on Congress General Secretary, Mr. Shriman Narayan's remark, the Chief Minister, Mr. E.M. Sankaran Namboodiripad, said loyalty to the Centre did not mean loyalty to the Congress. They had every right to differ from the Centre. In case there were differences in the interpretation of constitutional provisions between the Centre and the State, "you cannot take it that the Centre's interpretation is correct," he said.

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