Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Is this a political stunt?' that was published in Newsband

Is this a political stunt?

Was it right to file sedition and conspiracy charges against three former Jawaharlal Nehru University students and seven others? This is heavy-handed response to campus sloganeering. A charge sheet has been filed a few months ahead of the general election. Is this a political stunt?

The shouting of “anti-national” slogans and supporting those who questioned the country’s sovereignty do not merit the use of the sedition law. The essential ingredients of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, that there should be a call for violence or a pernicious tendency to foment public disorder, are conspicuously absent in the case. There has been a disquieting tendency to brand as “anti-national” those who do not endorse all actions of the state.

Courts admit all cases brought forward by the state to be on the safer side, politically and judiciously, and it ends up in causing the much talked about docket explosion. Instead, the courts may take a few days even to go through the entire case file and then decide their admissibility to enhance the efforts to speed up the judicial process as ' justice delayed is justice denied '.

Media seem to have woken up only after 2014 to take a look at "colonial" laws. Weren't they aware of its existence when the same law was applied to stifle disidents right from 50s until recently?

Those things aside, let us come to the shouting of JNU 'students' - was it against the Government or the ruling party? It was well settled by courts that Afsal Guru was the culprit behind Parl attack and the decision to hang him was taken by UPA which meant that across the political spectrum, there was a large consensus on his anti national character. Therefore, Afzal became beyond politics and was a rank anti national. So should the JNU students have shouted the slogan 'we will break India into pieces' and would it be right for the Government to be a silent spectator?

Positive dissent is not sedition but negative dissent i.e.against sovereignty is definitely sedition.Politics itself is source of sedition

The police sometimes choose to ignore the clear guidelines framed by the Supreme Court in 1962, reiterated recently, about what constitutes the offence of sedition. However, trial courts are bound to follow the law of the land. One hopes justice is done, ideally at the stage of taking cognisance itself. Sometimes the process itself is intended to be the punishment.