While the Supreme Court of India today posed specific questions relating to the need for the sedition law, even after 75 years of independence, Sikh political body Dal Khalsa has said that while the step of the Supreme Court is appreciable, there is an immediate need to scrap the law, rather than beat around the bush. WSN reports.

Perturbed over the indiscriminate misuse of sedition law against lawyers, students, journalists, protesting farmers and rights defenders, Sikh body Dal Khalsa today hailed the Supreme Court for questioning the validity of the Indian colonial era-sedition law.

In a statement released in Amritsar today, Dal Khalsa urged the apex Indian court to go one step further and ask the Indian government to remove this law from the statute as the Chief Justice said that by asking a rhetorical question, “he had indicated what he wanted.”

“Sedition laws have put peoples’ freedom in peril and the state apparatus has been using these to harass dissenters in a wholesale manner as the numbers of detentions show.”

Today, in open court, Supreme Court Chief Justice of the SC N.V. Ramana has questioned whether the sedition law was “still necessary after 75 years of Independence”. The court further observed that the law is a serious threat to the functioning of institutions and holds “enormous power” for misuse with no accountability for the executive.

Party spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh in his statement said, “the gross misuse of repressive laws including sedition and UAPA was going on brazenly.”

“I am sceptical that the courts and the executive will go beyond making a big noise about such draconian laws,” he added.

Speaking to WSN, Kanwar Pal Singh said, “Earlier too, on several occasions, the Supreme Court of India had held that ‘dissent is not sedition’ but it has had no effect, either on the Union government or the states who use the law of sedition with impunity and in total violation of the guidelines of the Supreme Court of India.”