{"id":6212,"date":"2020-02-07T09:38:32","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T04:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=6212"},"modified":"2020-02-07T09:38:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T04:08:32","slug":"bidar-sedition-case-section124a-of-the-indian-penal-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/bidar-sedition-case-section124a-of-the-indian-penal-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Bidar Sedition case &#038; Section124A of the Indian Penal Code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Relevance: Prelims\/Mains: G.S paper II: Polity: Indian Constitution- historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6214\" src=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar-1024x554.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"810\" height=\"438\" srcset=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar-1024x554.png 1024w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar-150x81.png 150w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar-300x162.png 300w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar-768x415.png 768w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bidar.png 1296w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Police are pursuing a complaint about a play performed by children of the age 9 to 12 of a private school in Bidar district of Karnataka.<br \/>\n\u2022 This case is an instance of the misuse of the sedition provision under Section124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Sedition law:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Section 124A of the IPC which was included in 1870 deals with sedition.<br \/>\n\u2022 It states that whoever brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India shall be punished.<br \/>\n\u2022 The punishment varies from imprisonment up to 3 years to a life term and fine. Sedition is a non-bailable offence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What were the actions taken?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The police have taken action for an allegedly seditious play against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.<br \/>\n\u2022 A teacher who supervised the performance and the parent of a child who added words to the script of the play were arrested.<br \/>\n\u2022 The primary school children are subjected to sustained harassment with utter disregard for child-friendly legislations.<br \/>\n\u2022 These actions are clear case of misuse of the power to arrest, as it is merely a verbal offence and doesn\u2019t require custodial interrogation.<br \/>\n\u2022 The police have deemed the opposition to the amendment act as something against the state.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The observed trend:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Supreme Court Bench observed that words such as \u2018anti-national\u2019 and \u2018sedition\u2019 were being bandied about loosely these days.<br \/>\n\u2022 The incident in Bidar serves as an example of this trend.<br \/>\n\u2022 This incident also confirms that the law is often used to silence political comment on matters deemed sensitive by the rulers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How Sedition should be invoked?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Sedition has been invoked to portray political dissent as promotion of disaffection.<br \/>\n\u2022 But, it can\u2019t be invoked without the essential ingredients for invoking the section, namely, an imminent threat to public order and incitement to take up arms or resort to violence.<br \/>\n\u2022 This is a fact that is being forgotten often.<br \/>\n\u2022 The section itself has an explanation that nothing that seeks to get the government to change its policy by lawful means is sedition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way ahead:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The police system believes that everyone who is suspected of committing an offence is to be arrested<br \/>\n\u2022 This belief is something that needs to be changed.<br \/>\n\u2022 To conduct the rules to punish the police personnel who violate the constitutional guarantees of free speech and personal liberty in an arbitrary way should be strengthened.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relevance: Prelims\/Mains: G.S paper II: Polity: Indian Constitution- historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure Context: Police<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,18],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-6212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-general-studies-ii","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6215,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6212\/revisions\/6215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}