Judicial Review of the Pardoning Power of President

Judicial review is the power of the courts of a country to scrutinize the actions of the legislative, executive, and administrative arms of the government and to find out whether such actions are constant with the constitution. Activities judged inconsistent are stated unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void. The organization of judicial review in this sense depends upon the presence of a written constitution. The usage of the term judicial review could be more accurately described as “constitutional review,” because there also exists a long practice of judicial review of the actions of administrative actions that require neither that courts have the power to declare those actions unconstitutional nor that the country have a written constitution. Such “administrative review” assesses the purportedly questionable actions of administrators against standards of reasonableness and abuse of decision. When Judges confronted administrative actions to be irrational or to involve abuses of discretion, those actions are declared null and void, as are actions that are judged erratic with constitutional necessities when courts exercise judicial review in the conventional or constitutional sense. Whether or not a court has the power to declare the acts of governing agencies unconstitutional, it can achieve the same effect by exercising “indirect” judicial review. In such cases the court articulates that a confronted rule or action could not have been envisioned by the legislature because it is inconsistent with some other laws or established legal principles. This paper basically deals with the question that whether there can be Judicial Review on the power of the President under Article 72 of the Constitution of India or to put it in other words whether the Pardoning power of the President of India can be subjected to Judicial Review or not.