Editorial: Continued misuse of the sedition law

Two things are crystal clear when reading this section. First, it is sheer ambiguity; expressions such as “bring into hatred” have no way of being properly defined, its vagueness permitting the prosecutorial system to misuse the provision. Second, this is but a modern version of the notion of treason, which applied to royalty; there are differences of course, but the parallels are clear.

The recent surge in sedition cases in different parts of the country, many of them slapped on journalists, highlights the urgent need to review Section 124A. Although convictions are extremely rare, the purpose of misusing the provision is to curb free expression, through a long and painful process, which could include imprisonment. In most cases, this is the intended punishment.

At a time when India’s ranking, vis-a-vis, the World Press Freedom Index, has been slipping over the past three years, the government needs to be cautious about misusing the law and creating an adverse climate for free speech. While the courts have stepped in to restore justice in specific cases most recently, the Supreme Court in securing the release of stand-up comic Munawar Farouqi the larger issue revolves around the very constitutionality of Section 124A.

Although there is a strong case for scrapping this invidious provision, its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1962 (Kedar Nath Singh vs. State of Bihar). But even in this judgment, the Court made it clear that criticism, however strong and trenchant, cannot amount to sedition, which must be reserved only for those acts which cause public disorder and acts of violence. Unfortunately, this distinction has been all but forgotten and sedition cases have been routinely slapped for remarks that fall well short of this yardstick.

With so many cases now slapped on journalists many related to tweets and articles published in connection with the farmer protests it is time that some legal mechanism is instituted to prevent its misuse. The best-case scenario, of course, is to scrap 124A altogether, a section that former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described as “objectionable and obnoxious” and better got rid of sooner than later. If the Supreme Court is reluctant to go this far, the next best course is to introduce a system of safeguards that regulate the filing of FIRs under Article 124A ideally, a mechanism that demonstrates the due process, one that is in consonance with earlier Court rulings about the sphere of its application. The issue before the nation is no longer about intervening to prevent the misuse of the law in this case or that. It is about either scrapping or making wholesale changes to the manner in which 124A is applied.