the President has commuted the death sentences of as Jitu Nainsingh Gehlot, to life imprisonment, against the recommendation of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

the President has commuted the death sentences of as Jitu Nainsingh Gehlot, to life imprisonment, against the recommendation of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence of Gehlot on September 5, 2000.
According to sources, the president did so because the home ministry’s recommendation went against the Supreme Court’s judgment in Shatrughan Chauhan vs Union of India, delivered on January 21, 2014. The Supreme Court had held that undue and inexplicable delay in disposing the mercy petitions of the convicts by the president could be a valid ground for commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment.
However, the president’s exercise of his discretion in the matter has raised an interesting and unprecedented constitutional issue. Article 74 (1) of the constitution says there shall be a council of ministers with the prime minister at the head to aid and advise the president who shall, in the exercise of his functions, act in accordance with such advice. A proviso to this sub-clause says that the president may require the council of ministers to reconsider such advice, either generally or otherwise and the president shall act in accordance with the advice tendered after such reconsideration.
In the commutation of death sentence, the President appears to have thought it unnecessary to use this proviso and found that he was legally bound to follow the law laid down by the Supreme Court, rather than the recommendation of the union council of ministers.
This is because, as Yug Mohit Chaudhry, who appeared as the counsel for the death row convicts in the Shatrughan Chauhan case says, the law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on everybody within the territory of India, under Article 141. Equally, it is binding on the government as well as the president. Therefore, if a recommendation Critics of the president may point out that the Supreme Court had in Maru Ram v Union of India, in 1980, had held that in deciding mercy petitions, the president is bound by the advice of the council of ministers under Article 74. While the judgment in Maru Ram was delivered by a five-judge bench, Shatrughan Chauhan was delivered by a three-judge bench.
But the president would be right, if he believed that the Maru Ram precedent is not relevant now because the question of advice tendered by the council of ministers being inconsistent with a law declared by the Supreme Court under Article 141 was not before the bench in Maru Ram.