The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the sedition law , Bar and Bench reported. This comes less th...
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the sedition law, Bar and Bench reported. This comes less than three months after the court had dismissed a similar plea by three lawyers challenging the provision.
A three-judge Bench of Justices UU Lalit, Indira Banerjee and KM Joseph issued notice to the central government on a plea by two journalists – Kishorechandra Wangkhemcha from Manipur and Kanhaiya Lal Shukla from Chhattisgarh – challenging Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code that penalises sedition.
The petitioners said they were charged with sedition for questioning the state governments and the Centre, and for certain comments and cartoons they shared on social media platforms. They contended that the provision infringes upon the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
The petitioners argued that the law has been frequently misused since 1962, when it was first introduced. And while “abuse of a law” in itself does not bear on the validity of that law, it does point to “the vagueness and uncertainty” of the provisions, they said.
“Tendency and intention have been so widely interpreted and employed in such a discretionary manner that those merely exercising their democratic rights have faced penal sanction...
