Supreme Court sends strong message on Sedition law

• Chief Justice sent a clear signal that Section 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code may have passed its time.
• CJI made it clear that the court is sensitive to the public demand to judicially review the manner in which law enforcement authorities are using the sedition law
• The law has been used to control free speech and send journalists, activists and dissenters to jail, and keep them there.

Section 124A:

• Sedition is a cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable offence under the law, entailing life imprisonment as maximum punishment, with or without a fine.
• Under Section 124A of IPC, the offence of sedition is committed when any person by words or otherwise brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law.
• Disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.
• Police can arrest individuals without a warrant under the section.
• The law has been amended after Independence, but only to make it more stringent.

History of Section 124A:

• It was introduced in 1870 in IPC.
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the first person to be convicted of sedition in colonial India.
• The British government convicted him over articles in Marathi newspaper Kesari alleging it would encourage people to foil the government’s efforts at curbing the plague epidemic in India.
• In 1897, Tilak was punished by the Bombay high court for sedition under Section 124A and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
• After independence, the word “sedition” was removed from the Constitution while adoption on November 26, 1949
• Article 19(1)(a) gave absolute freedom of speech and expression.

• However, Section 124A continued to stay in the IPC.
• It was the Indira Gandhi government that made Section 124A a cognisable offence for the first time in India’s history.
• In the new Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which came into force in 1974, sedition was made a cognisable offence.

Kedar Nath case (1962)

• It is considered the most authoritative judgment of the Supreme Court on the interpretation of the sedition law.
• A Constitution bench upheld the validity of the sedition law under IPC, holding that the purpose of the crime of sedition was to prevent the government established by law from being subverted.
• At the same time, the bench defined the scope of Section 124A.
• It held that Section 124A only penalised words that reveal an intent or tendency to disturb law and order or that seem to incite violence.
• SC underlined that the presence of a pernicious tendency to incite violence as a pre-condition to invoke the sedition clause and that the penal provision cannot be used to stifle free speech.

Statistic of Cases under 124A:

• According to the data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB):

1. Cases of sedition and under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act showed a rise in 2019, but only 3% of the sedition cases resulted in convictions.
2. 2019 saw a 25% increase in the number of sedition cases and a 41% increase in arrests over the previous year.