BJP’s Plan Against Opposition For 2024 Lok Sabha Polls Is To Make Sedition Law ‘More Draconian’: Congress

Congress has accused BJP of planning to make sedition law “more draconian” so that it will used against Opposition ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha election.

The Law Commission of India has proposed retention of the colonial era law with key amendments.

“The BJP, through its instrumentalities and agencies, is clearly using or intending to use sedition as a tool to subverse, subjugate and silence dissent….. This government has obliquely declared its clear intent to continue its selective and partisan misuse of this law against political dissent,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, as per The Indian Express report. 

Singhvi as per the report said it is “quite astonishing” how the Law Commission has recommended not only retention of Section 124A of IPC but making it harsher and more ferocious. 

“This is a terrible, tragic, and treacherous development. The BJP is planning to become draconian, drastic and deadly by misuse of a colonial-era law,” Singhvi was quoted as having said. 

He, as per the report, said the Law Commission’s proposal makes the existing law “far more draconian and invasive, far more prejudicial by enhancing the lower end of punishment from three to seven years. It clearly ignores the letter, and more importantly the spirit, of Supreme Court proceedings last year, which specifically rendered the entire offence of sedition stillborn, clearly intended to be inoperative pending its repeal or significantly softening.”

“It has sent a clear signal as to the colonial mindset of this government. A colonial mindset coupled with a signal sent to the nation that we intend to retain this draconian provision as a threat to you, as a threat upon you, as a threat against freedom of speech, thought, and action, which is the essence of democracy itself,” he was quoted as having said.