Supreme Court Puts On Hold Sedition Law Till Centre Re-Examines It, New Cases Will Not Be Registered

New Delhi, 11th May 2022: The Supreme Court has stayed the sedition law. Now new cases will not be registered under this. Apart from this, in old cases also people can go to the court and appeal for relief.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the central government, argued that it would not be right to stay the registration of new cases under this law until it is reviewed. He said that in cognizable offences, such cases can be registered on the recommendation of a senior officer. However, the court rejected the arguments of the central government and decided to stay the law.

The court unilaterally asked the central government to review this law and advised to reconsider its section 124A. On the other hand, it also prohibited the registration of new cases under 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) till the completion of the review process. The top court asked the central and state governments to now stop the registration of cases against people under Section 124A of the IPC.

This section is also called sedition law. There has been a frequent demand to remove this British-era law, for which an application was also filed in the top court recently. Hearing this, the court has given this decision.

The central government had argued in the court that it would be wrong to give a stay on the sedition law, which the Constitutional Bench had also said to uphold. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the central government, said in the court that as far as pending cases are concerned, we are not aware of the seriousness of each of them. In some of these cases there may be a terror angle, while in some cases there may be a case of money laundering. The pending cases are sub-judice before the courts and we must rely on their process. But the court ordered a stay on the Centre’s arguments, considering it insufficient.