SC seeks govt reply on plea against sedition

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the penal law on sedition, which according to a plea in the top court, is often used to stifle dissent and valid criticism against government functionaries.

A bench, headed by justice Uday U Lalit, sought a response from Centre on the petition challenging the constitutional validity of the sedition law while also calling for assistance of attorney general KK Venugopal considering the significance of the matter.

The bench, which included justices Indira Banerjee and K M Joseph, issued notices while hearing the petition filed by two journalists and argued by senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, who challenged the validity of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which penalises the crime of sedition punishable with either imprisonment ranging from three years to a lifetime, a fine, or both.

The petition, filed by Kishorechandra Wangkhemcha and Kanhaiya Lal Shukla - working in Manipur and Chhattisgarh, respectively, said Section 124-A infringed on the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression which is guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

The journalists said that they were charged with sedition for their comments, on the social networking website Facebook, in which they sought to question certain policies and actions of the governments in the states and at the Centre.

“There is frequent phenomenon of misuse, misapplication and abuse of Section 124-A since 1962...The sections of sedition have been repealed in comparative post-colonial democratic jurisdictions around the world. While India calls itself a ‘democracy’, throughout the democratic world the offence of sedition has been condemned as undemocratic, undesirable and unnecessary,” the plea stated.

Citing the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the validity of the law in 1962 in the case of Kedar Nath Singh Vs State of Bihar, the petitioners said that the court may have been correct in its finding nearly six decades ago, but the law no longer passed constitutional muster.

According to the data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), cases of sedition and under the stringent UAPA for terror cases showed a rise in 2019, but only 3% of the sedition cases resulted in convictions.