The Supreme Court has agreed to hear on Monday a plea of the Centre challenging the Tamil Nadu government's decision to release the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.<br/><br/>The Centre had filed the plea in 2014. A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi yesterday considered the submission of Prabu Ramasubramaniam, the counsel for convict A G Perarivalan, that the case be heard as the convicts are in jail for the last two decades.<br/><br/>The lawyer said the matter had been listed quite a few times in the past, but it got deleted from the list. Besides Perarivalan, six other persons–Murugan, Shantan, Robert Pais, Nalini, Jayakumar and Ravichandran–were convicted in the case.<br/><br/>The apex court had in 2014 stayed the Tamil Nadu government's decision to release the convicts and had set up a five-judge Constitution Bench to deal with the issue relating to the power of states and the Centre to grant the benefit of remission and pardon to convicts.<br/><br/>The apex court had held that the state government cannot unilaterally determine remission of sentences in cases where the probe had been conducted by central government agencies.<br/><br/>The Constitution Bench, however, had said the issue, whether convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case can be granted remission or not, would be handled by a three-judge bench. The bench has been set up, but no hearing has taken place so far.