- Humankind has moved ahead keeping in line with the changing times since millenniums. Not for nothing it is said that the change is the only constant. In adherence to this time-tested expression, several measures of monumental implications have been embraced with open arms by humanity over the period. Needless to mention, the endeavor to stay relevant in the face of mind-boggling innovations and developments only further emphasizes the need to keep looking for introducing or repealing anachronistic measures that may have passed the sell-by date. It could be anything that hinders humanity from surging ahead seamlessly, including the laws of the land which deserve a relook to alter/repeal if it serves no further purpose.
PC: MIHIR DESAI
- The present dispensation at the Centre has repealed hundreds of obsolete laws ever since assuming the responsibilities. However, there are still some laws like the sedition act which should have no place whatsoever in the present-day world. Several concerned citizens and civic society members have been raising the red flag to do away with the sedition law for some time now. The matter had reached the portals of the Supreme Court. On its part, the SC recently referred the validity of the sedition law, Section 124A of IPC, to a five-judge constitution bench. For the uninitiated, the backstory is that in May 2022, SC suspended the operation of the sedition law while it was under consideration in a case.
- Subsequently, the Union Government introduced a bill, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 to replace IPC. SC ignored this development, and rightly so, as any law to replace IPC will have a prospective effect. We are aware how sedition has often been misused – prominent examples include its application in agitations on reservations or even the one against the Kudankulam nuclear plant. Many thousands remain affected by open sedition cases. There are also other reasons to justify SC’s move. The wording of Section 150 of BNS has a significant overlap with IPC’s sedition law. A constitution bench’s verdict on sedition will be useful to the parliamentary committee that’s studying BNS. The primary problem with the sedition law was summed up by former CJI Ramana.
PC: Abhinav Rana
- He said that if the police want to fix somebody sedition is invoked. The law has lent itself to misuse because of loose wording. It’s also led to jurisprudence that’s not quite in sync. Of course, the constitutionality of sedition was upheld by a five-member SC bench in 1962. Interpretations of when it could be invoked have evolved in line with the ways the judiciary has dealt with fundamental rights. Sedition has been consistently misused by police forces in India to clamp down on expression or protests that inconvenience governments. Thus, sedition in its current form or even in a revised manner has no place in India. In power, all political parties have shown the same inclination to misuse the sedition laws. This law must be repealed forthwith.
