The Law Commission of India said that “repealing the legal provision can have serious adverse ramifications for the security and integrity of the country”
The Law Commission of India has recommended the retention of the 153-year-old colonial law on sedition in India, emphasising that “repealing the legal provision can have serious adverse ramifications for the security and integrity of the country.” Instead, the Commission favoured amending Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code or IPC (sedition law) “so as to bring about more clarity in the interpretation, understanding, and usage of the provision.”
According to the Commission, headed by former Karnataka high court chief justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Section 124A should be amended to align it with the Supreme Court’s 1962 verdict in the Kedar Nath Case, which underlined that the presence of a pernicious tendency to incite violence is a precondition to invoke the sedition clause and that the penal provision cannot be used to stifle free speech.
It added that the sedition law, which carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment or “three years”, should be amended to enhance the alternative punishment to “seven years”, giving the courts greater room to award punishment for a case of sedition in accordance with the scale and gravity of the act.
The operation of Section 124A, a non-bailable offence that activists and jurists have alleged is often misused to muzzle dissent, is on hold due to a continuing interim order of the Supreme Court on May 11, 2022.
The 279th report of the Commission, answering a reference made to it by the Centre in March 2016, recommended that Section 124A should be amended to read as: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India, with a tendency to incite violence or cause public disorder shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.”
The proposed provision incorporates “with a tendency to incite violence or cause public disorder” in Section 124A, as elucidated in the Kedar Nath verdict, and enhances the alternative punishment from three to seven years in jail.
The expression “tendency”, the Commission said, means a mere inclination to incite violence or cause public disorder rather than proof of actual violence or imminent threat to violence.
It also prescribed procedural safeguards to minimise the abuse of the penal provision. “This can be achieved by introducing certain procedural safeguards that can be laid down by the central government through the issuance of model guidelines in this regard,” said the report dated May 24.
Alternatively, the Commission said, Section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code could be amended to hold that a first information report (FIR) under Section 124A would be registered only after a police officer, not below the rank of Inspector, conducts a preliminary inquiry and on the basis of the report made by the officer, the central government or the state government grants permission for registering the FIR.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/law-commission-recommends-retention-of-sedition-law-in-india-proposes-changes-101685681464225.html