On 30th March, Thursday Lahore High Court Judge, Justice Shahid Karim annulled Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), 1860 declaring it as ultra vires of the Constitution.
Section 124 A reads as, “whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the federal or provincial government established by law shall be punished”, tantamount to depriving the people of their fundamental right of freedom of expression.The freedom to free speech and expression protected by Articles 9, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 19, 19A of the Constitution has been viciously curtailed in Pakistan attributable to the careless recourse to the sedition law as an instrument of enslavement.
The petition questioned the constitutionality, validity, and legitimacy of Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860, which stigmatises “Sedition,” claimngi that Section 124-A was operating as a blatant tool for the suppression of dissidence, personal liberty, and condemnation in a “a free and autonomous” Pakistan.
The petitioners claimed that the significant number of these charges were politically motivated and based on obscure, ambiguous, and vague claims
Justice Shahid Karim of the High Court Lahore in deciding the Petition, invalidated Sedition Law while dealing with a batch of petitions seeking to annul Section 124A of the PPC on the ground that the law was being used abrasively by the government against opposition parties, particularly PTI.
Senate of Pakistan in the Senate sitting of 8th June 2020 also passed a bill The Pakistan Penal Code Amendment Bill 2020 Omitting section 124 A of the PPC, they stated that this section is a part of the inherited Colonial Structure of governance that continues in Pakistan, this law served a brutal occupying force and today is being applied with increasing regularity to crush political dissent and make the citizen submit to unquestionable obedience.
The same section 124 A similarly mentioned in Indian Penal Code was put in abeyance by the Supreme Court of India earlier.
The judgement has foundation It should have been questioned long ago.