Supreme Court directs States, UTs to promptly supply decision on remission to convicts

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered all State governments and Union Territories to ensure that as soon as a decision is made on whether to grant remission (premature release from prison) to a convict, a copy of the decision is to be immediately provided to the convict [In Re: Policy Strategy for Grant of Bail]..A Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih further said it was necessary to make the prisoners aware of their right to challenge an order rejecting a remission plea. The Court said the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) should look into this aspect and come out with suggestions to ensure that immediate legal aid is made available to prisoners so that such orders can be challenged."Is there any manner how these rejection are communicated to individual prisoners? Is there any direction by this court in which manner the rejection is to be communicated? If it is not, we may pass directions. Subject to correction, NALSA guidelines also do not talk about this. Legal services authority should let prisoners know that they can challenge these cases of rejection. We will see", Justice Oka had observed during the hearing, before passing today's order. .The Bench was hearing a suo motu public interest litigation (PIL) petition on the grant of bail in cases where appeals of convicts against their conviction have remained pending for long.In earlier orders, the top court had laid out a procedure for disposing of all bail applications and appeals in such cases, and involving a single offence, in one go.In such long pending cases, the Court had also called for enlarging the accused on bail unless there exist special circumstances for not doing so..Enact separate Bail Act to streamline grant of bails: Supreme Court .Amicus Curiae, Senior Advocate Liz Mathew, today took the Court through compliance reports submitted by various States on the processing of premature release (remission) applications.The Court then passed directions in respect of prisoners in Manipur, Assam and West Bengal..Notably, in earlier orders passed in the matter, the top court has emphasised that:- Persons in jail who have completed at least 10 years of sentence and whose appeals are not likely to be heard anytime soon, should be enlarged on bail, provided there are no other extenuating circumstances- All States are to issue directions to jail authorities to provide data on undertrials languishing behind bars due to non-fulfilment of bail conditions- Local courts may suo motu consider relaxing bail conditions in cases where bail bonds have not been furnished by accused for over a month.Magistrates should be sent to judicial academies to upgrade skills if they needlessly send people to custody: Supreme Court.[Live Courtroom Exchange]