through aggravating and mitigating circumstances came up for consideration in Swamy Shraddananda (2) v. State of Karnataka. On a review, it was concluded in para 48 of the Report that there is a lack of evenness in the sentencing process. The rarest of rare principle has not been followed uniformly or consistently. Reference in this context was made to Aloke Nath Dutta v. State of W.B. which in turn referred to several earlier decisions to bring home the point. 31. The critique in Swamy Shraddananda was mentioned (with approval) in Santosh Kumar Satishbhushan Bariyar v. State of Maharashtra while sharing this Court's “unease and sense of disquiet” in paras 109, 129 and 130 of the Report. In fact, in para 109 of the Report, it was observed that: (Bariyar case) “109. … the balance sheet of aggravating and mitigating circumstances approach invoked on a case-by-case basis has not worked sufficiently well so as to remove the vice of arbitrariness from our capital sentencing system. It can be safely said that the Bachan Singh threshold of ‘the rarest of rare cases’ has been most variedly and inconsistently applied by the various High Courts as also this Court.” 32. It does appear that in view of the inherent multitude of possibilities, the aggravating and mitigating circumstances approach has not been effectively implemented. 33. Therefore, in our respectful opinion, not only does the aggravating and mitigating circumstances approach need a fresh look but the necessity of adopting this approach also needs a fresh look in light of the conclusions in Bachan Singh. It appears to us that even though Bachan Singh intended “principled sentencing”, sentencing has now really become Judge-centric as highlighted in Swamy 20