- In the ongoing proceedings challenging the validity of Section 124A of IPC in the case titled SG Vombatkere vs Union of India the Centre has filed an affidavit in the Apex Court on Monday, informing that it has chosen to re-examine and reconsider section 124A of IPC which criminalises sedition.
- This affidavit has come just two days after the Centre had defended the sedition law and had urged the SC to dismiss the pleas challenging it.
- The Centre submitted that there are divergent views expressed in the public domain by various academicians, jurists, intellectuals and citizens regarding this offence.
- To justify this decision, the Centre has cited the Prime Minister’s notion that at a time when our country is marking 75 years of its independence, it intends to work towards shedding the colonial baggage. It was in this spirit that the Centre had scrapped over 1500 outdated laws since 2015. It had also ended over 25,000 compliance burdens which were causing unnecessary hurdles to the citizens. Various offences have also been decriminalised in pursuance of the aforementioned goal.
- Thus the affidavit read that “ The GOI being fully cognizant of various views being expressed on the subject of sedition and also having considered the concerns of civil liberties and human rights, while committed to maintain and protect the sovereignty and integrity of this great nation, has decided to re-examine and reconsider the provisions of section 124A of IPC which can be done only before the competent forum.”
- The Centre said that the SC may not invest time in examining the validity of section 124A, whose validity was upheld in Kedarnath Singh vs State of Bihar (1962) and be pleased to await the exercise of reconsideration to be undertaken by the Union government, before a forum where such consideration is constitutionally permitted.
- The arguments in the case would be heard today on the legal question of whether the pleas challenging the colonial era penal law on sedition be referred to a larger bench for reconsidering the 1962 verdict of a five-judge bench in Kedar Nath vs State of Bihar.
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