Mandatory One-Year Imprisonment Condition for Parole Eligibility Struck Down as Unconstitutional and Arbitrary

The Petitioner, a convict under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, was sentenced to one year of simple imprisonment and a fine/compensation.

Having surrendered on May 3, 2025, he applied for parole leave on March 23, 2026.

The prison authorities, however, directed him to withdraw the application citing Rule 14 of the Maharashtra Prisons (Furlough and Parole) Rules, 2024 ("Rules of 2024"), which mandates a minimum of one year of actual imprisonment before becoming eligible for regular parole.

The Petitioner challenged the constitutional validity of this specific provision under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The court relied on the Larger Bench decision in Kantilal Nadlal Jaiswal v. Divisional Commissioner (2020), which established that parole is a limited legal right, not a mere administrative concession.

Any restriction on parole must have a rational nexus to the objective of the Rules.

The principle from Asfaq v. State of Rajasthan (2017), which holds that parole/furlough are humanistic tools intended to help prisoners maintain social links and solve personal problems.

The test of "manifest arbitrariness" under Article 14 as elucidated in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018).

The Court observed that Rule 12 and 13 of the 2024 Rules grant parole for urgent family contingencies such as serious illness, death, birth of a child, or natural calamities.

Following the logic of the Kantilal Jaiswal precedent, the Court reasoned that a mandatory "one-year cap" of actual imprisonment bears no rational nexus to these humanitarian grounds.

It found it "insensitive and even cruel" to bar a prisoner from attending to a dying relative or a destroyed home simply because they had not yet served 365 days.

The Court noted that unlike furlough, parole periods are not counted toward the sentence (Rule 19), and thus the restriction was an arbitrary barrier that defeated the "humanistic approach" mandated by the Supreme Court.

Consequently, the restriction failed the classification test and was deemed manifestly arbitrary.

The Court struck down that specific portion of the Rule.

The Respondents were directed to decide the Petitioner’s parole application in accordance with the law on or before May 15, 2026; the Writ Petition was disposed of accordingly.