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| Pranab Mukherjee |
Among the ceremonial invitations piled on the desk of India's new president Pranab Mukherjee sits a small file that could provide the veteran politician with one of his biggest challenges.
The folder contains 11 mercy petitions from condemned convicts for whom Mukherjee now represents the last legal obstacle between their death row cells and the hangman.
As president, Mukherjee is required to decide on clemency petitions that are forwarded by the home ministry, in the final stage of India's death penalty appeals process.
It is largely an inherited challenge.
India has more than 400 people on death row and the courts hand down fresh death sentences every year.
But Mukherjee's three presidential predecessors, while signing off on a number of recommendations for clemency, often stonewalled when it came to appeals the ministry recommended should be rejected.
As a result, only one execution has taken place in 15 years -- that of a former security guard hanged in 2004 for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.
The lack of executions has led some to question why India retains a death penalty it so rarely enforces.
Source: nydailynews.com, August 23, 2012
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