The Supreme Court on Thursday nullified a sedition case registered against senior journalist and Padma Shri awardee Vinod Dua for his critical remarks about the Prime Minister and the Union Government in a YouTube telecast, while underscoring its 59-year-old verdict that “strong words” of disapproval about the ruling regime does not amount to sedition.
A Bench led by Justice U.U. Lalit upheld the right of every journalist to criticise, even brutally, the measures of the government with a view to improve or alter them through legal means. The free speech of a journalist should be protected from charges of sedition.
The apex court judgment by Justice Lalit upheld the spirit and intent of its 1962 Kedar Nath Singh judgment, which said that “commenting in strong terms upon the measures or acts of Government, or its agencies, so as to ameliorate the condition of the people or to secure the cancellation or alteration of those acts or measures by lawful means, that is to say, without exciting those feelings of enmity and disloyalty which imply excitement to public disorder or the use of violence is not sedition”.
“Every journalist is entitled to protection under the Kedar Nath Singh judgment,” Justice Lalit declared. The 1962 judgment had said Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (sedition) was intended only to punish subversion of a lawfully established government through violent means.
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