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Beyond The Abolition Of Sedition? A Critical Examination Of Section 152 Of The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 In Light Of Section 124A Of The Indian Penal Code

The Union government has billed the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 as the law that finally did away with sedition, the offence that sat in Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. This paper puts that claim to the test, reading Section 152 of the new code against the provision it supposedly replaces, and against the limits the Supreme Court set out in Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar. My argument is that Section 152 doesn't get rid of sedition so much as move it somewhere else. The verb structure from the old offence is still there. The reach is now wider, stretched to cover undefined categories like "subversive activities" and "separatist activities." A fine-only sentence is no longer an option. And the tendency-to-incite-violence requirement; the one thing that kept Section 124A on the right side of the Constitution is nowhere in the new text. Working through the wording of both provisions, the Law Commission's 279th Report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee's own review of the Bill, and the constitutional challenge currently pending before the Supreme Court, the paper concludes that Section 152 carries forward the central flaw of Section 124A under a new label, and closes with textual and procedural fixes meant to address it.