Revisiting Sedition Law

In Context

• The government has asked the SC to defer the hearing on Sedition law.

About

• The Home Minister has asked the Supreme Court to defer the hearing on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Sedition law.
• The minister has conveyed that let an appropriate forum, presumably the Parliament will eventually decide the fate of Sedition law in accordance with democratic ethos.

Background

• What is section 124A?
  • It defines the offence of ‘sedition’ and is colloquially known as Sedition law.
  • Definition: According to Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, a person commits the crime of sedition if he/she brings or attempts to bring in hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established according to the law.
  • Penalty: It penalises the crime with maximum punishment of life imprisonment with added fine or an additional jail term of three years.
  • Incorporation: The provision was incorporated in its current form in the penal code (IPC) in 1898, nearly four decades after the IPC was introduced and has withstood the test of constitutionality since.
• Issues with the sedition law
  • Opponents of the law say that the provisions of the law are sweeping in nature and have been misused by the different governments.
  • They also contend that the punishment prescribed i.e., life imprisonment with an added fine or an additional jail term of three years is irrational for a just society.
  • The authority to identify and distinguish genuine expression of speech from seditious speech is the police which is not well trained to examine the case at first stance.
  • It has been observed that the Magistrates who are the first defenders of citizen’s rights in the judiciary often allow the pleas of the state without appropriate scrutiny.
  • Concerned citizens along with civil society activists and eminent jurists have opined that subsequent governments have used the law in an unjustified manner to curb the opponents; members of the oppositions, journalists, social activists etc.
• Courts’ validations of the law since Independence
  • Punjab and Allahabad High Courts in 1950s struck down the sedition law as an exception to free speech.
  • Subsequently, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar (1962) gave the law a constitutional validity.
  • But the apex court cautioned the state to move ahead with the law in a just manner and use it only in cases where seditious speech tended to incite ‘public disorder’.
  • However, the phrase ‘public disorder’ is nowhere in the provisions of the law but was used by the Court in the judgment.
  • After upholding the law in 1962 judgment, the Supreme Court’s decision to revisit the constitutional validity of this colonial provision is an important juncture for the future of Section 124A.

Recent occurring

• While the Supreme Court was about to decide on the petitions pertaining to the constitutional validity of the law recently, the Home Ministry asked the court to defer it.
• Earlier, the government said that the Kedarnath judgment that upheld the validity of sedition law is established law, no reason to revisit and the bench of three judges cannot reconsider the ratio of a constitution bench without referring the matter to a larger bench.
• But soon after the matter was set for listing, the Home Minister assured the court that a competent forum, presumably Parliament will deliberate on the law and will give it a logical conclusion.
• The affidavit by the government said that it is committed to maintaining and protecting the sovereignty of the nation as well as removing outdated colonial laws.
• It is a welcome move by the government especially after defending the law initially.
• Reinforcing the commitment given by the Home Minister, the Prime Minister recently at the eve of ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’, said that India needs to shed the colonial baggage as the country marks 75 years since independence.

Other countries and sedition laws

• The sedition law became obsolete in the UK in the 1960s and was finally repealed in 2009. The opponents of the law argue that when the country who imposed the law on India has already repealed the given law then why India is continuing with it.
• Singapore too like India inherited the Sedition law from Britain but it repealed it stating that a set of new laws can sufficiently address issues that were under the ambit of the sedition law.

Way Forward

• The government should walk the talk and should go ahead to arrive at a logical conclusion.
• The changed stance of the government should not be meant for foreclosing the prospect of judicial review and setting aside the reforms.
• Successive reports of the Law Commissions and the judgments of courts have also reported the rampant misuse of the law which put the lives of the accused in peril.

Though the governments in the past have emphasised on the need for balance before the courts but have routinely applied the provisions against journalists and ordinary citizens expressing their dissatisfaction with the government, hence the status-quo should change for good.