The Lottery and the Ledger: Why India Needs Sentencing Guidelines Judges Must Consider but Need Not Obey

Equal Before the Law, Unequal at Sentencing Article 14

promises equality before the law. That promise has been weakest at sentencing, the stage when a conviction is turned into a specific punishment. The text of a penal statute sets a ceiling and sometimes a floor. Everything between them is decided by the individual judge, with no list of factors to weigh and no requirement to explain why one convict receives two years and another, for the same offence, receives seven.

Discretion Without a Framework

The rule as written leaves a very wide range. In practice, empirical research by Dr. Mrinal Satish on rape sentencing found courts reducing sentences for legally irrelevant reasons, such as the complainant's supposed chastity or a later marriage, while ignoring psychological harm or breach of trust.

Discretion exercised this way becomes arbitrariness and Articles 14 and 21 forbid arbitrary State action, including when the State acts through a judge. The warnings are long-standing. The Law Commission's 47th Report raised the problem in 1972.

The Malimath Committee recommended statutory guidelines in 2003. The Supreme Court described sentencing as one of the weakest parts of the system in Soman v. State of Kerala (2012). In Sunita Devi v. State of Bihar (2024), it said sentencing should not be a lottery and asked the Centre to examine a national sentencing policy.

The matter now sits with the Law Commission.

The Pendency Link

Unequal sentencing also feeds pendency. Without a common standard, appellate courts correct unduly harsh or lenient sentences one case at a time, reasoning afresh each time. Many criminal appeals before High Courts reportedly challenge only the sentence, not the conviction. A framework applied at trial would remove much of that work before it ever reaches an appeal court.

Presumptive, Not Mandatory

The design question is how much to bind judges. Mandatory sentencing grids, which would bind judges absolutely, would trade arbitrariness for rigidity and could raise their own concerns about judicial independence. The better model is presumptive.

In England and Wales, a Sentencing Council created under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 issues guidelines that place each offence by culpability and harm, with a starting point and range. Courts then adjust for aggravating and mitigating factors and must follow the guideline unless that would be contrary to the interests of justice.

The Luthra-Sengupta proposal adapts this for India through three functions:

1. Guidelines built on a three-stage method of seriousness, a starting point and range and an individualised final sentence.
2. A national sentencing database on the National Judicial Data Grid, so that disparities become visible.
3. A duty to give reasons, with guidelines issued as delegated legislation laid before Parliament. Courts must consider them and explain any departure. This keeps judicial independence intact, because the judge still decides, while making that decision accountable. It also gives practical force to tools India already has but underuses, such as Section 258(2) of the BNSS on separate sentencing hearings, probation under Section 398 and the Probation of Offenders Act, 1958. For the exam, the insight is that equality under Article 14 requires consistency at sentencing, not only at trial and that presumptive guidelines can deliver that consistency without taking discretion away from judges.