Law of Sedition in India-More Misuse than Use?: A Critical Analysis with respect to National and International Statistics

Abstract

The law of Sedition in India has got a dark history with it being enacted by a colonial government to force people to accept its supremacy and penalise the deviants. The said law is being used repeatedly by governments to crush political dissent. The apex court, thorough its various rulings, has quite clearly restricted the scope of execution of the said law to check its misuse, and most surprisingly, the bare section of the act itself, if followed strictly, would help tackle its misuse. The explanations appended to the said section regulate the scope of this blazing fire section, which can be very easily used as tool by a democratic government to run nation like a dictator, by suppressing any voice that deeply questions and abrupt execution of any government policy. But the data revealed by various agencies, be it national, or be it international, has quite clearly established the fact of arbitrary and selective use of the said law. The statistics, viewed from various angles, very explicitly enlighten the exploitation of the said law by various means in the past few years. The work at hand, critically examining all these issues, and most importantly, the pattern of statistics, attempts to raise a case for strong amendments in the existence and execution of the said law.