No sedition laws against critics: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Sedition and defamation laws cannot be invoked by governments against critics and political dissidents, the Supreme Court said. But, it refused to issue any fresh ruling to prevent the misuse of the British-era laws, saying that the magistrates, not the police, have to follow the safeguards to curb misuse of these.

The top court on Monday said it had clarified earlier that the sedition law could not be invoked unless there was incitement to violence or intent to create public disorder, ignoring the argument of activists and NGOs that these rulings had failed to curb such misuse.

A public interest litigation, filed by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan through NGO Common Cause on behalf of antinuclear activist SP Uday Kumar, had drawn its attention to the rising instances of sedition cases being filed against critics and political dissidents and demanded fresh court intervention to curb such misuse. “… though a very small number of sedition cases leads to actual conviction, it causes harassment of individuals till the time judgement comes out which… takes many years to come,” the NGO said.

Sedition, which entails a life term in jail, could only be invoked if all the guidelines laid down in an earlier ruling were met, a bench of justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit said.

In 1962, the court had ruled that the law should be invoked only if there was “incitement to violence or intention to create public disorder”.