‘Journalists are entitled to protection against sedition’
Indian SC quashes case against journalist Vinod Dua
The Supreme Court of India yesterday quashed a sedition case registered against senior journalist and Padma Shri awardee Vinod Dua for his critical remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi 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 UU 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 court acknowledged the submission made by Dua, who is currently recovering from Covid, that "there is a recent trend against the media where State governments who do not find a particular telecast to be in sync with their political ideologies register FIRs against persons of the media primarily to harass them and to intimidate them so that they succumb to the line of the State or else face the music at the hands of the police".
The verdict may spell a push-back from the court against the indiscriminate number of sedition cases being filed against critical journalists, citizens, lawyers and activists in India .
The complaint against Dua was filed by a BJP leader. He was accused of spreading fake news. Besides sedition, the other charges include causing public nuisance, printing of defamatory matter and making statements conducive to public mischief.