This week at the Supreme Court: Notice issued in constitutional challenge to India’s re-introduced sedition law
The petition argues that under the BNS even as the language has been altered, the substantive content of the infamous Section 124A of the IPC remains intact.
Published on: 10 August 2025, 01:59 pm
ON FRIDAY, THE SUPREME COURT ISSUED a notice to the Union government on a public interest litigation (‘PIL’) challenging Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which reintroduces the colonial sedition law previously codified as Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (‘IPC’).
A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’) B.R. Gavai, and Justices K. Vinod Chandran and N.V. Anjaria, also tagged the PIL with the batch of petitions pending before the Supreme Court challenging Section 124A of the IPC.
The Bench was hearing a PIL filed by retired Major General of the Indian Army, S.G. Vombatkere, through advocate Prasanna S. who earlier filed a petition challenging Section 124A of the IPC in 2021.
Importantly, on May 11, 2022, while hearing a challenge to Section 124A of the IPC, the Supreme Court directed that the said section be kept in abeyance.
A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice of India (‘CJI’) B.R. Gavai, and Justices K. Vinod Chandran and N.V. Anjaria, also tagged the PIL with the batch of petitions pending before the Supreme Court challenging Section 124A of the IPC.
What does Vombatkere’s petition argue?
Vombatkere contends that Section 152 of the BNS is nothing but a repackaged sedition law, reinstated despite the pending challenge and suspension of Section 124A.
The petition reads: “Though the language is altered, its substantive content—criminalising vague and broad categories of speech and expression such as ‘subversive activity,’ ‘encouragement of separatist feelings,’ and acts ‘endangering unity or integrity of India’—remains the same or is even more expansive.”
The petition argues that Section 152 criminalises a wide spectrum of expressive conduct, including those who “purposely or knowingly” use words—spoken, written, electronic, symbolic, or financial—to “excite or attempt to excite” secession, rebellion, or subversive activities.
It states: “Its sweeping language, including phrases like ‘encouraging feelings of separatist activities,’ fails the test of constitutional validity due to vagueness, overbreadth, chilling effect, disproportionate punishment, and absence of proximate nexus to public disorder.”
The petition further states that Section 152 violates the principles of clarity, necessity, and proportionality and permits arbitrary state action.
It adds that Section 152 BNS threatens democratic discourse and the right to dissent, and thus cannot be permitted to remain on the statute book.
It also argues that each component of the section suffers from vagueness, overbreadth, and arbitrariness, thereby violating Articles 14, 19(1)(a), and 21 of the Constitution.