Sedition law against India’s conscience; high time SC considers its 'abrogation': Moily

News Network
May 5, 2022

New Delhi, May 5: Senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Thursday said the sedition law is against the conscience of the Indian nation and it is high time the Supreme Court considers "abrogating" it from the pages of criminal law.

His assertion came on a day the Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on May 10 on the legal question whether the pleas challenging the colonial era penal law on sedition be referred to a larger bench and granted time to the Centre to file its response.

The law of sedition has again reignited a public debate, including before the Supreme Court, and the public is very much focused on the subject, Moily noted.

The Britishers fully invoked this section to silence the freedom fighters such as Mahatma Gandhi and Balgangadhar Tilak, the former Union minister and a senior lawyer said.

"It has now become routine for lawmakers both in the state and at the Centre to silence the dissenters who are opposed to the view of the established governments....ultimately the law is misused to kill the democratic ethos in the country," he said.

"Real patriots are put behind bars under the provisions of Section 124 A (sedition) and democratic expression has been assaulted by the governments in power," Moily said.

While Mahatma Gandhi called Section 124A "the prince among the political sections of the IPC designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen", Jawaharlal Nehru said that the provision was "obnoxious" and "highly objectionable", and "the sooner we get rid of it the better", Moily pointed out.

"Both of them voiced conscious consensus of the freedom fighters and patriots. The nation should have scrapped the law as it inherited the colonial legacy of suppressing independent opinion. Hence the sedition law is against the conscience of the Indian nation," he said.

Moily said the second Administrative Reforms Commission in its fifth report on public order considered many provisions on federal crimes, including sedition, and recommended re-examining the offences which have inter-state or national ramification and include them in a new law.

"It is high time that the Supreme Court of India consider abrogating the law of sedition from the pages of criminal law of the country as the said law goes against the patriotic ethos of the country and intends to remove the conscience of ethos of India and also the Constitution and freedom fighters of the country," Moily said.

A special bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya kant and Hima Kohli was also told by Attorney General K K Venugopal, who was assisting in his personal capacity, that the misuse of the provision like it happened against a Maharashtra MP for reciting 'Hanuman Chalisa' has to be stopped by laying down guidelines.

However, there was no need to refer the five-judge bench verdict of the top court in the Kedar Nath case in 1962 to a bench of five or seven judges, the top most law officer said.

The apex court had upheld the constitutional validity of the sedition law in the Kedar Nath Singh case. 

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Agencies
November 22,2025

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New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump has again claimed to have solved the conflict between India and Pakistan, repeating his assertion during a meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

Mamdani flew to Washington DC for his first meeting with Trump in the White House on Friday. Trump said he “enjoyed” the meeting, which he described as “great.”

During remarks in the Oval Office, with Mamdani standing next to him, Trump repeated his claim that he solved the May conflict between India and Pakistan.

"I did eight peace deals of countries, including India and Pakistan,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump had said he threatened to put 350 per cent tariffs on India and Pakistan if they did not end their conflict, repeating his claim that he solved the fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called him to say “we're not going to go to war.”

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over 60 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

India has consistently denied any third-party intervention. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians. India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

Mamdani emerged victorious in the closely-watched battle for New York City Mayor, becoming the first South Asian and Muslim to be elected to sit at the helm of the largest city in the US.

He had been the front-runner in the NYC Mayoral election for months and defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and political heavyweight former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate and was officially endorsed by Trump just hours before the elections.

Indian-descent Mamdani is the son of renowned filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. He was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda and moved to New York City with his family when he was 7. Mamdani became a naturalised US citizen only recently, in 2018.

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News Network
November 24,2025

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Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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News Network
December 5,2025

Mangaluru: In a significant step to curb online hate and intimidation, Mangaluru City Police have registered a suo motu case against multiple Instagram accounts accused of circulating alleged provocative and threatening content.

While monitoring social media activity on Tuesday, Kankanady Town PSI Anitha Nikkam identified the Instagram handle ‘team_targetttt_900’ for posting a hate message alongside images of lethal weapons. Another account, ‘team_nagara_900’, allegedly shared a threatening post targeting activist Bharath Kumdelu, tagging additional pages such as KARAVALI-OFFICIAL.

Several other accounts — including ‘immu_bhai.fan’, ‘target_boy_900’, ‘kings_of_manglore’, ‘team_target_boys.900’, ‘arshad_mangalore’, ‘target_ka19_ullal’, ‘team_target__’, ‘troll_tigersz_900’, ‘tr_group_900’, and ‘team_target_900’ — are also under scrutiny for spreading similar inflammatory material, police said.

Authorities have urged citizens, especially young social media users, to report suspicious pages and avoid engaging with groups that glorify violence or threaten individuals. Online hate can quickly escalate into real-world harm, and police stress that sharing or promoting such content can attract legal consequences.

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