Yesterday, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice Vineet Saran, came out with a Judgment on an important issue – Sedition. Before I take you to the substance of the Judgment, I would like to give you a brief idea on Journalism and Journalist!
How many of us knew that there is no separate legal protection of any sort to Journalists in India?
As any other Indian claims his rights under Article 19 pertaining to freedom of speech and expression, similarly, Journalist too expresses his journalism within the ambit of such Article under Constitution of India.
And as Article 21 guarantees protection of life and personal liberty to all Indians, Journalist too receives his protection from such holistic Article of our Constitution.
Now the question is, how a Journalist is expected to work with no other special privileges or powers and deliver his journalistic responsibilities under a mediocre government of these days?
Momentarily, another question crops-up in our mind – is there any other profession commands special privileges or powers?
To an extent Doctors and Advocates commands limited rights and powers under the Law to discharge their responsibilities diligently and judiciously.
In fact even a veteran Journalist who has put in decades of service in the media receives the same treatment before the law when it comes to express his views on the government policies and questioning its irrational decisions to that of a common man’s anxiety that later expresses thus in the social media! And in fact yesterday’s Judgment of the SC was sort of that one! Here I am not disputing “equality before law.”
Now coming to the case details;
Vinod Dua is a Journalist of a rare breed. Who is a recipient of Padma Shree and also many more awards were being honoured on him for being a Journalist of excellence. In his early days of Journalism, he shared his space with today’s NDTV fame Pranoy Roy and now Journalist turned Social Activist, Yogendra Yadav.
Dua is now with a Delhi based HW media and running a YouTube based show called Vinod Dua Show. Wherein, in the month of March 2020, he ran a show [and I am one of the viewer] and he politely, yet sarcastically, expressed his anguish over various issues such as migrant labourers, their tears, their un-ending long journeys etc., etc., etc., and he without mincing words raised many queries against the administrators and pointed their inefficiency and deficiencies in discharging their responsibilities.
On such background, one of the Modi supporters from Himachal Pradesh [HP] registered a Complaint against Vinod Dua and according to him Dua committed sedition and he thereby requires to be prosecuted accordingly. The FIR was registered and a Summons was issued to Dua and he being 66 years of age then rejected the idea of physical presence in HP based Police Station citing HP Government Corona Guidelines and he was willing to attend video conferencing.
Thereafter, Dua approached Supreme Court and sought immunity from being arrested, also pleaded SC to quash an FIR and also sought a direction to give immunity to a Journalist of 10 years experiences from being registered an FIR arbitrarily by the Police but only by the Committee [he pleaded to be] appointed for such purpose.
Yesterday’s 117 pages [A4 size] Judgment speaks about various things and took references from various judgments decided by the SC’s predecessor Judges and also Constitution Benches of the past.
The outcome of the Judgment was;
The Bench quashed an FIR registered by the Himachal Pradesh Police against Dua, but rejected his plea on “no FIR be registered against a Journalist of 10 years’ experience, henceforth.”
Yet the SC said in its Judgment, “every Journalist will be entitled to protection in terms of Kedar Nath Singh, as every prosecution under Section 124-A and 505 of the IPC must be in strict conformity with the scope and ambit of said Sections as explained in, and completely in tune with the law laid down in Kedar Nath Singh.”
The Kedar Nath Singh judgment was authored in 1962 and at that time SC said the Sedition provision was constitutionally a right one. Otherwise, the key substance of the Judgment was; as long as the criticism against the government not encourages violence and the same shall not be treated as sedition.
However, now time has changed, government is no more a government of unbiased and every tricks are now being played by the ruling party [I am not commenting particular party] to finish off its adversaries as competitive politics and the seat of power entrenched on their veins. Even otherwise when there is no strong opposition in place, media is a wholesome representative of citizens of the country and also the first and prime witnesses of any incidents that affect or effect the citizens, must be allowed to question the government freely, hence, I am of the opinion that SC has not compared India of 1962 with 2021.
In 1962, we never had numerous TV Channels except that of a state-owned Doordarshan. Computer and internet services were even remotest of our thoughts than. Today, with the advent of World Wide Web we are close to global incidents – we get to know the incidents happening anywhere in the world in our mobile. 1000s of TV Channels have flourished at our disposal and millions of people are viewing mobile contents and in such case still considering “Sedition” provision as constitutionally valid is nothing but denying citizens their absolute rights enshrined under Article 19 and 21 in today’s context.
The SC have failed to consider this matter in a broader perspective as today’s India is filled with Social Activists and every viewers of the mobile contents are now a Journalist on his own and started questioning the authorities. In fact, the Sedition provision has no place in today’s India – when the Courts says – inciting violence alone results to sedition – can we ignore those sedition cases casually framed up by the Police against the innocent activists who questioned the governments. As long as we would not repeal such colonial provisions from our Statutes we won’t be proud to claim to have been protected by our Constitution.
Even otherwise, retaining such provision would only encourage a Journalist to become a Public Relation Officer of the Government and it won’t bring out factually correct or right information in the public domain and this is because a Journalist is incapable to draw that thin line that would differentiate “peace and violence” from his authored text or from his verbal expression.
And we cannot ignore, this week, in another case, Justice Chandrachud, sarcastically questioned the Government over misuse of sedition provision. Now the time has come to repeal such draconian provision of law that abuses our fundamental rights or restrain us from questioning the government in power.