The government's move fast-forwarding the disposal of mercy petitions of those on the death row is attributed to clear the decks before Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving Pakistani terrorist in the 26/11 Mumbai, comes up with clemency plea against his death sentence.

Though he is yet to try the last appeal in the supreme court since after the Bombay High Court confirmed his death sentence in February, the government does not want to wait until he qualifies to move the mercy plea before the president. He is expected to move the apex court and the government expects the judgement before the year-end.

There is bound to be a nationwide clamour for hanging him without delay, once the supreme court upholds the conviction, the government would not be able to hold back his mercy petition for long, home ministry sources said. Nor can it put on the top of the pending petitions and hence the bid to clear the backlog, they said.

Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party jumped on president Pratibha Patil's rejection of mercy petitions of two death row convicts to question delay in execution of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, the sources said his case is also under consideration and moreover these are not the only two cases she has decided so far.

She has already cleared as many as 12 mercy petitions since May 2009, though commuting the death into life imprisonment in 10 cases while rejecting the clemency plea only in two cases of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar of Punjab and Mahendra Nath Das of Guwahati.

The mercy pleas now pending before her are around 20 and the home ministry is already examining them to send its recommendations to the
president and that includes the case of Afzal Guru, who is all likelihood to be recommended to be hanged as the Delhi government and the Delhi Lt Governor have reportedly sought rejection of the mercy petition moved by his wife on his behalf.

Those whom the president gave clemency with life imprisonment as early as in April this year includes S B Pingale who was convicted to death for
killing two in Maharashtra. His mercy plea was pending since 2001.

Two other cases in which she converted death sentence into life imprisonment late last year are of Piara Singh and three others convicted for killing 17 persons of a marriage party in Punjab in 1991 and one R Govindsamy who had heckled to death five members of a family in Tamil Nadu. There are seven other cases in which death was commuted to life.

Meanwhile, the decision to reject the mercy pleas of Bhullar and Das has kicked up a new row, questioning home minister P Chidambaram's constant stand of deciding the applications serial-wise and not jumping the queue to dispose of Afzal Guru's case.

There are at least five mercy petitions that are much older than that of Bhullar and among them is the mercy petitions of Rajiv Gandhi's assassins Murugan, Santhan and Arivu, pending since 2000. The ministry had reportedly sent its recommendations to the Rashtrapati Bhawan in their case almost two months before it recommended rejection of the application of Bhullar.

In fact, there are five mercy pleas filed in 2000 but not yet considered as against the mercy plea filed by Bhullar in 2003 and by Das in 2000 decided on Thursday. Ministry officials refused to explain why their pleas are kept hanging while those applying later are being cleared.

Questions are being raised on the government's "pick and choose" policy in deciding the mercy petitions, moving up the queue some cases. For instance Bhullar's plea was pending since 2003 whereas the pleas of Rajiv Gandhi's assassins have been pending since 2000.

Also, the ministry gave its final recommendation on Bhullar's plea on August 9, 2005, whereas its final recommendation on Rajiv Gandhi's killers had already been given on June 21, 2005, almost two months earlier. It's inexplicable why Bhullar's plea was decided by the president before that of Rajiv's killers.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad termed delay in execution of Afzal Guru as "a copy book example of vote-bank politics." He said his mercy petition should be rejected at the earliest to send him to the gallows.

It is an irony that the parliament attack case was fast-tracked in courts while the government drags its feet in deciding the mercy petition despite the supreme court twice confirming conviction of Afzal Guru, he said.