Jaipur Dialogues Sedition law in India

Y

YSK Chaitanya

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The sedition law in India is enacted by Section 124A which forms part of Chapter VI of the Indian Penal code which deals with the offences against the state. The law was introduced in 1870 . The British government in India after 1857 rebellion started codifying the law as Indian penal code in 1860 and fearing that people might declare war on government after the recent rebellion implemented many laws to suppress Indian masses one of which is the sedition law. The British government used this law to actively suppress advocates of freedom like Mahatma Gandhi and Lokmanya Tilak both of whom were found guilty and imprisoned.

The section drew criticism post independence as a draconin law to suppress free speech in India. Sedition was also made a cognizable offense under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1973,that is, arrest without warrant was now permissible. Post emergency there has been many observations of this law were made by the Honourable Supreme court but not a single thing changed in the law and it was continuously used in India to suppress criticism. Due to pre-trial incarceration which is on an average nearly 21 months serves as a credible deterrent concerning the long time courts take to give a verdict which leads to rampant misuse of the law.

The law came to limelight after many years when Supreme court asked the centre on why it was not repealing the colonial era law. This has re-ignited debate on the law among the academics while some support repealing the law others including the ex chief justice of India are not in favour of repealing the law and taking into account of information warfare and other security issues in India the law needs to be amended and airtighted instead of repealing it completely for example, any request for an FIR for sedition must be made by a Superintendent of Police or higher ranked officials with written reasons and only an active incitement can be considered to be sedition like in a speech by Sharjeel Imam where he is heard instigating people to cut Northeast from India. Second, only a Sessions Judge with minimum 3 years of experience can convert a complaint into an FIR for sedition. The complaint must also include statutory anticipatory bail for any accused who is accused of sedition with stringent conditions. Finally a time bound judgement of sedition cases will really be encouraging for the people to raise questions against the government. These are some of the things which can be done to limit the misuse of this law. Ironically this law has been repealed by the United Kingdom in 1998 but sadly India is still continuing with this colonial law which was used by the erstwhile British Government to suppress the local populace.

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