Justice Awasthi: We are not suggesting increase in punishment. That has been wrongly interpreted by the media. We have made recommendations basically on three points: first is we have tried to adopt the ratio laid down in the Supreme Court judgment in the Kedarnath case, just to make it more clear.
There is some confusion as to when the sedition offence would be attracted. The Constitution Bench has used certain words which are important and necessary to use in case of the offence. Only those we have used to make things more clear with respect to the offence.
The second thing is we have suggested to give some procedural safeguards to avoid its misuse. We have said that when the alleged offence of sedition is committed, an immediate FIR should not be lodged.
First, there must be a preliminary enquiry by a person of a rank not less than that of sub-inspector before a complaint is lodged. Arrest should only be after lodging of the FIR after this stage. So that is a big safeguard which we have introduced to prevent the misuse. The language we feel is necessary to reduce the misuse. Lot of people had been talking of its misuse.
Third thing is, while examining the provision for punishment, we found that there is a large gap…up to three years or life imprisonment, this was very unreasonable. There is no IPC offence with such a big gap in the punishment, no reasons are provided. If in a court, the prosecution has been able to prove the offence of sedition, that it has been committed and the court feels it should be more than three years but not life imprisonment, then there is no discretion with the court.
We have only said that it should be up to seven years instead of the three-year period as was provided earlier, along with fine. Now people are not understanding the meaning of “up to”. Life imprisonment was already and is still there. But it is not always given. What we found and what we have done was suggested by three earlier Commission reports – 39th, 41st and 42nd.
Source: Barandbench
