NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s move to examine a legislative route to try rapists of over 15 years as adults and “explore” if life sentence or death can be awarded in cases involving rape of minors is unlikely to make much progress.Officials at the central ministry of women and child development ( WCD ) said it extremely unlikely to back the Delhi government ’s plans while some legal experts described the move as “foolish” and “irrational”.For the WCD ministry, entrusted with the welfare of women and children, playing ball with Kejriwal would mean “reinventing the wheel” even as its legislative push to try juveniles between 16-18 years as adults in heinous offences through the Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Bill, 2014 is still to get Rajya Sabha’s nod, officials said. Delhi government would need WCD ministry’s nod to bring down juveniles’ age limit to 15 and the latter is in no mood to relent.“It was only after relying on data furnished by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and interaction with all the concerned agencies that the decision to bring down the age of minors from 18 to 16 years was arrived,” a senior ministry official said, pointing out that the NCRB data reflected a sharp increase in crimes committed by juveniles in the 16-18 age group. “Now to further bring down to 15 years has to be based on and backed by some empirical evidence,” the official said.Kejriwal on Monday had also announced a group of ministers to explore whether life sentence or death penalty can be awarded to juveniles held guilty of heinous offences.“It was only after a series of discussions and consultations with experts that it was decided that the maximum imprisonment to be awarded to a juvenile held guilty of a serious crime can be seven years,” the ministry official said. “Reform needs to be preferred over absolute retribution.What is the scope of reform left if extreme penalty of life imprisonment or capital sentence is to be awarded to juveniles?”Retired Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court Justice Permod Kohli told ET that though the state government has the “jurisdiction” to make law since a central law already exists, the central law shall prevail and the state law will be “rendered void”.“Can there be a separate criminal law for Delhi. Will it not be hit by Article 14 (Equality before law) of the Constitution?” Justice Kohli said. That it is “a foolish argument only to befool the people”, he added.A senior law ministry official, too, criticised the Delhi government’s move. “There is abundant literature, both Indian and international, to state that resorting to such extremist approach is highly ill-founded and uninformed,” said the official who requested not to be named.The official added that there also is a US Supreme Court judgment and the UN Convention on the Rights of Child, which strongly recommends against severe retribution, least of all death penalty, to juvenile offenders.The suggestion by the Delhi government to explore death penalty for juveniles guilty of heinous crimes also runs in direct conflict with the recent report of the National Law Commission, which has recommended abolition for death penalty in India except for terror related crimes.Former chairman of the commission, Justice (retd) A P Shah, in September had sent the commission’s report to the government stating that death penalty “cannot be reduced to vengeance and that the notion of ‘an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ has no place in our constitutionally mediated criminal justice system. Capital punishment fails to achieve any constitutionally valid penological goals”.