In the midst of being surfaced with the unprecedented attention over what's his final decision on pardoning Perarivalan, who is one of the convicts of the Rajiv Gandhi Assassination case, Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit has on Thursday stayed off from granting clemency for Perarivalan and passed the ball on the court of the President of India, pushing the convicts to wait for more time and keep counting the three decades of imprisonment. 

The Governor was filled with a slew of demands from the political parties in Tamil Nadu both the ruling ADMK and opposition DMK to take his final decision and act according to the resolution of the state's cabinet recommending the release of Perarivalan. Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami has also asserted that the Governor would take a good decision. However, Purohit had on Thursday shocked the state by passing the responsibility to the President of India by stating that the President holds the authority to decide on pardoning the convicts. 

The Governor has directed a sudden twist despite the judiciary's observation that he holds the power to make a final decision. Earlier, the Supreme Court had also given a week time for the Governor to take the final decision on the recommendation tabled by the state government that has been lying before him for over two years. The apex court had noted that the Governor had made extraordinary delay in deciding on the government's recommendation on releasing the Rajiv Gandhi case convicts and most of the legal analysts saying that the Governor can't veto the recommendation that was unanimously passed by the state cabinet. 
 
The deadline for Governor from the Supreme Court was expired last Friday and during the course of one week, the Chief Minister and senior ministers had affirmed that the Governor would take a good decision in favor of the recommendation and the state has expected that the convicts would mark the end of their three decades of imprisonment. However, the Governor has on Thursday decided to stay off from acting the recommendation of the state government and passed the ball on the court of President Ram Nath Kovind. 

According to reports, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs made a submission in the Supreme Court on Thursday and informed the court that the President has decided he is the appropriate competent authority to decide on the matter. In the submission, the Home Ministry said, "His Excellency the Governor of Tamil Nadu considered all the facts on record and after perusal of the relevant documents, recorded that the Honorable President of India is the appropriate competent authority to deal with the said request for remittance matter vide his order dated 25.01.2021. The proposal received by the Central Government will be processed in accordance with law". 

Though the Supreme Court recorded the mercy plea of Perarivalan, the Governor can decide on the clemency of six other convicts - Nalini, Murugan, Ravichandran, Santhan, Jayakumar, and Robert Pious. They have been convicted for assassinating the then Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur on 21st May 1991. Following the assassination, the accused connected with the case were arrested and when TADA court had dictated death sentence for 26 people, the Supreme Court in 1999 had acquitted 19 and convicted only these seven people. 

Of these seven, Nalini, Murugan, Santhan, and Perarivalan were awarded death sentences while the other three were sentenced to life imprisonment. However, in 2014, the apex court had commuted the death sentences of the four convicts to life, by citing delays in deciding their mercy pleas. All the seven have been serving imprisonment for the past three decades and a call for release Perarivalan had grown stronger after a former CBI official Thiagarajan, who investigated the case, had admitted that he had left out the crucial part in Perarivalan's confession that he did not know the purpose of batteries, which was used in the explosive to kill Rajiv Gandhi. 

Four years after commutation of their sentence, the Tamil Nadu government led by Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami had passed a resolution in 2018 to release the convicts and moved the recommendation to the Governor. This recommendation has been lying before Banwarilal Purohit for over two years and now he has decided to stay off from the recommendation and levied the responsibility to the President, pushing the convicts and their families to brace up more time. Following the Governor's decision of declining to release the convicts, the opposition parties in the state have been flaying him for failing to discharge his duties and condemned the state government for not pressing him to act on its recommendation.