President Pranab Mukherjee has called for changes to the 'archaic' India Penal Code.
Amid a raging debate on JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar being booked for sedition, President Pranab Mukherjee has called for changes to the 'archaic' India Penal Code which he says has undergone a very few changes.
"The IPC has undergone very few changes in the last 155 years. Very few crimes have been added to the initial list of crimes and declared punishable," he said at the valedictory event on the occasion of the year-long celebrations of the 155th anniversary of IPC in Kochi.
The President's concern is in tune with PM Modi's repeated mention of "obsolete laws" in his speeches including the one at the Madison Square Garden in the US. The Prime Minister has, time and again, highlighted the need for doing away with such laws. The government has identified 1,827 laws to be repealed, of which, 125 have already been done away with. The Lok Sabha has cleared another 758 to be repealed which is now awaiting the approval of the Upper House.
Congress Spokesperson Manish Tewari said, "There can be no disagreement with what the President is saying and most laws were made in the 19th century. The laws that are redundant need to be repealed."
Though political parties agree there are archaic laws that have no place in 21st century India, the alleged anti-national slogans raised on the JNU campus have made sedition a politically sensitive subject.
Leading a protest outside the Congress office on Saturday, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha chief and BJP MP Anurag Thakur said, "The sedition law should be made stronger. Freedom of speech is not absolute. Can't talk about breaking up the country."
It's not just sedition. From section 377 that criminalises same sex relationships to the Telegraph Act of 1880 that continues to govern our telecom rules, legal experts also feel an overhaul is long overdue.
Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court Sanjay Hegde said, "Every society re-evaluates its laws. It looks at efficacy of these laws. Section 377, 124A (sedition) of IPC are draconian sections which come from a previous era, which though rarely used, are capable of much misuse by the administrators."