{"id":118586,"date":"2021-07-14T20:02:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T14:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=118586"},"modified":"2021-07-14T20:02:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T14:32:41","slug":"disable-unconstitutional-sections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/disable-unconstitutional-sections\/","title":{"rendered":"Disable unconstitutional sections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId=GV18P01K0.1&amp;imageview=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Hindu<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Relevance: Laws that are declared unconstitutional by the judiciary, are still in use. What policy measures are required to ensure the proper implementation of orders.<\/p>\n<h5><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The police must ensure that no FIR is registered under unconstitutional sections and no one is harassed for the negligent actions of SHOs. A multipronged approach is desired to achieve this objective. This includes regular training, disabling online registration of FIR under unconstitutional sections and taking corrective actions against negligent police officers.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Background<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the Supreme Court expressed shock while hearing an application filed by the People\u2019s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It observed that <\/span><b>criminal cases are still being registered by the police under Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. However, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the section was declared unconstitutional by the SC in 2015 (Shreya Singhal v. Union of India).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The PUCL said that 1,307 cases had been registered since 2015 across the States. Therefore, <\/span><b>the Court must issue guidelines against registering FIRs by the police under this head.<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Undoubtedly, the registration of FIRs by the police under these sections is illegal and violative of the Court\u2019s directions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Sections declared unconstitutional by the court<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2015, the Supreme Court had declared <\/span><b>Section 66A<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the IT Act as unconstitutional. The section made the online posting of information considered as \u201cgrossly offensive\u201d a crime punishable by jail.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the court held that it was violative of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and not saved under the ambit of reasonable restrictions defined in Article 19(2).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It had also said that the expressions used in Section 66A were open-ended, undefined, and therefore arbitrary.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1983, the Court had struck down <\/span><b>Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> provided capital punishment for murder by a person serving a life term in another case.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>In Mithu v. State of Punjab,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> it held that the punishment was not based on rational principle<\/span><b> as no judicial discretion was available to a life convict<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2018 <\/span><b>(Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Court read down <\/span><b>Section 377 of the IPC criminalising \u201cunnatural sex\u201d as being unconstitutional.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Similarly, in<\/span><b> Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Court held <\/span><b>adultery <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as defined under<\/span><b> Section 497 of the IPC<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as being manifestly arbitrary, discriminatory and violative of the dignity of a woman and therefore, unconstitutional.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Steps to improve the situation:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The supervisory police officers at the sub-divisional level must ensure that such sections, if invoked,<\/span><b> are removed at the earliest.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The<\/span><b> Superintendents of Police<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> must fix responsibility on the erring officer and take corrective action.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the SHOs and others don\u2019t mend their ways despite reprimands, <\/span><b>their annual confidential reports could be dented with adverse entries.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Action can also be initiated under the new <\/span><b>Section 166A of the IPC,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which provides punishment for up to two years for disobeying directions under the law.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A prudent focus should be placed on <\/span><b>educating police officers <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of all ranks about unconstitutional provisions in basic training institutes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There could be <\/span><b>a mention in brackets near the provision that the provision has been struck down, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">so that FIRs are not registered under those sections.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unconstitutional sections of the IPC can be <\/span><b>disabled in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most States register FIRs in the CCTNS either on a real-time basis or in offline mode and synchronise this data with the State Data Centre as soon as connectivity is restored.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Chhattisgarh has disabled these Sections<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the system; a similar thing could be done by other states as well. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The Hindu\u00a0 Relevance: Laws that are declared unconstitutional by the judiciary, are still in use. What policy measures are required to ensure the proper implementation of orders. Synopsis: The police must ensure that no FIR is registered under unconstitutional sections and no one is harassed for the negligent actions of SHOs. A multipronged approach&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/disable-unconstitutional-sections\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Disable unconstitutional sections<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704691131},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}