{"id":121568,"date":"2021-07-27T19:48:09","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T14:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=121568"},"modified":"2021-07-27T19:48:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T14:18:09","slug":"opposing-sedition-law-is-good-optics-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/opposing-sedition-law-is-good-optics-and-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Opposing Sedition Law is Good Optics and Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/blogs\/beyond-the-headline\/opposing-sedition-law-is-good-optics-politics-with-section-66a-and-article-35a-ended-nda-govt-should-do-the-same-for-section-124a\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Times of India<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With Section 66A and Article 35A ended, the government should do the same for Section 124A. It would prevent harassment of dissent and uphold the right to free speech under Article 19 of the constitution.<\/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;\">The Supreme Court (SC) had recently asked the Centre the rationale behind not scrapping the sedition law (S-124A of Indian Penal Code).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The time given for providing rationale has now expired, and the center should now take a call on its scrapping.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Opinion of Court on Sedition<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The SC believes that the sedition law has had a \u2018<\/span><b>chilling effect\u2019 on free speech<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further S-124A is a colonial vestige of a <\/span><b>repugnant design to silence advocates of India\u2019s right to self-determination.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A concerned SC judge recently <\/span><b>held law enforcement agencies guilty of hounding \u2018dissidents\u2019 using 124A<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in violation of guidelines set in legal stone to limit the potential for its misuse.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lower courts have also wagged a censorious finger at state-level authorities for the same reason.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Why should the government abolish it<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">?<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The recent Pegasus attack has put fresh allegations on it for assaulting civil liberties using insidious spyware.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It will result in <\/span><b>upholding the right of free speech under Article 19 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the constitution.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It will showcase a<\/span><b> progressive attitude of the government towards citizens and the constitution<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Acknowledgment of the overbearing nature of Section 66A and its decision to scrap the discriminatory Article 35A are some progressive steps taken in the past.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Section 66A of the IT Act was struck down by SC in 2015, calling it \u201copen-ended and unconstitutionally vague&#8221; as it muzzled free speech on the internet.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Article 35A of the Indian Constitution was an article that empowered the Jammu and Kashmir state&#8217;s legislature to define &#8220;permanent residents&#8221; of the state and provide special rights and privileges to them.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It will <b>prevent harassment of opposition members in the future<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The current government should understand that eventually, after some years, they would take the opposition seat and wouldn\u2019t want to get harassed under sedition laws.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Times of India\u00a0 Synopsis: With Section 66A and Article 35A ended, the government should do the same for Section 124A. It would prevent harassment of dissent and uphold the right to free speech under Article 19 of the constitution. Background: The Supreme Court (SC) had recently asked the Centre the rationale behind not scrapping&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/opposing-sedition-law-is-good-optics-and-politics\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Opposing Sedition Law is Good Optics and Politics<\/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":[212],"class_list":["post-121568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704884620},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121568","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=121568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}