The Congress Party on Wednesday welcomed the Supreme Court's decision in connection with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case and trained its guns on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for what the grand old party dubbed as 'pathetic politics' on this issue.
"I welcome the decision of the Supreme Court. It was already very clear that the Government of India can only give clemency and the state government had no power. But the manner in which Jayalalithaa has been playing the parochial, so called Tamil card that she wants to do, is completely shameful," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.
He stressed the punishment to the killers of a leader and noble person like Rajiv Gandhi cannot be taken lightly.
"The manner in which Jayalalithaa has played this politics is pathetic. It has no place in India. It's really shameful that she wants to use this kind of stuff for the votes. I hope that the Supreme Court's decision would give better sense to leaders like Jayalalithaa who don't think about the nation while making the statements," he added.
The apex court in its ruling today said the killers of the former prime minister will stay in the jails of Tamil Nadu, thus overruling the state government's decision to release the convicts.
The apex court stressed that the Centre would have the final say in remission of sentence in cases investigated by a central agency.
The judgment is a setback to the Jayalalithaa-led government which had in February 2014 decided to release all the seven convicts in the case, a day after the apex court commuted death sentence into life term for three convicts owing to delay in deciding their mercy petitions by the Centre.