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3. Section 32A of the NDPS Act bars the suspension, remission or commutation of sentence awarded under the NDPS Act, subject to provisions in Section 33. However, the said provision is not applicable to cases covered by Section 27 of the said Act. The same reads as follows:

"32A. No suspension, remission or commutation in any sentence awarded under this Act.--Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974) or any other law for the time being in force but subject to the provisions of section 33, no sentence awarded under this Act (other than section 27) shall be suspended or remitted or commuted."

"14. We may safely assume that, but for the bar of Section 432-A, the rules of remission and short-sentencing legislation would, in all probability, result in orders of release by Government of the thousands of petitioners before us. Thus, it is of central importance to decide whether Parliament has no legislative competence to enact the impugned provision.

15. We dismiss the contention of competency as of little substance. It is trite law that the Lists in the Seventh Schedule broadly delineate the rubrics of legislation and must be interpreted liberally. Article 246(2) gives power to Parliament to make laws with respect to any of the matters enumerated in List III. Entries 1 and 2 in List III (especially Entry 2) are abundantly comprehensive to cover legislation such as is contained in Section 433-A, which merely enacts a rider, as it were, to Sections 432 and 433(a). We cannot read into it a legislation on the topic of "prisons and prisoners". On the other hand, it sets a lower limit to the execution of the punishment provided by the Penal Code and is appropriately placed in the Chapter on Execution and Sentences in the Procedure Code. Once we accept the irrefutable position that the execution, remission and commutation of sentences primarily fall, as in the earlier Code (Criminal Procedure Code, 1898), within the present Procedure Code (Chapter XXXII), we may rightly assign Section 433-A to Entry 2 in List III as a cognate provision integral to remission and commutation, as it sets limits to the power conferred by the preceding two sections. This limited proscription as a proviso to the earlier prescription relates to execution of sentence, not conditions in prison or regulation of prisoner's life. The distinction between prisons and prisoners on the one hand and sentences and their execution, remission and commutation on the other, is fine but real. To bastardize Section 433-A as outside the legitimacy of Entry 2 in List III is to breach all canons of constitutional interpretation of legislative lists. Parliament has competency". (emphasis supplied)

26. In Dadu (supra), the Supreme Court upheld Section 32-A of the NDPS Act. The same was struck down only insofar as it took away the right of the courts to suspend, remit or commute the sentence awarded to a convict under the Act. The Supreme Court clarified that the preservation of the power of the Court to suspend, remit or commute the sentence would neither entitle such convicts to ask for suspension of the sentence as a matter of right in all cases, nor would it absolve the courts of their legal obligation to exercise the power of suspension of sentence within the parameters prescribed under Section 37 of the NDPS Act. Thus, the aspects of suspension, remission or commutation of sentence are not a matter of right, but they are mere concessions. This is also clearly stated in Rule 66 of the DP Rules, which provides that "Subject to the provisions of these rules, remission may be granted as hereinafter provided as a matter of concession only and not as of right". (emphasis supplied)

31. Reliance placed by learned counsel on clauses (v), (xix) & (xxx) of Section 71(2) of the DP Act - to claim that such clauses empower the State to grant remission/ commutation of sentence, is also misconceived. Section 71 of the DP Act only enacts the rule making power of the Government which, as noticed hereinabove, means the Lieutenant Governor referred to in Article 239AA of the Constitution of India. The Lieutenant Governor is the Administrator of NCT of Delhi. The said rule making power is conferred on the Government to enable the Government "to make rules generally to carry out the provisions of this Act". The rule making power is vested in the Government so as to make the supplementary provisions for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the Act. Such rule making power cannot supplant the provisions contained in the DP Act. Pertinently, in the DP Act, there is no substantive provision which empowers any authority to grant suspension, remission or commutation of sentence of a convict. Thus, neither clause (v), nor clause (xix), nor clause (xxx) contained in Section 71(2) can be understood to mean that they empower the Government to grant suspension, remission or commutation of sentence under the DP Act.