India’s colonial-era sedition law spent years in an unusual legal limbo: neither struck down nor fully operational. This article explains the Supreme Court’s 2022 order that created this situation, what has happened since, and how the law’s replacement in the new criminal code fits into the picture.
The Colonial-Era Law at the Centre of the Dispute
Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, India’s sedition provision, criminalised bringing or attempting to bring “hatred or contempt” or exciting “disaffection” toward the government, a broadly worded offence dating back to the colonial era that critics had long argued was fundamentally incompatible with a modern democracy’s protections for political speech and dissent, since the law’s vague language around “disaffection” could, in principle, sweep in a wide range of ordinary political criticism alongside genuinely dangerous incitement.
The May 2022 Abeyance Order
In S.G. Vombatkere v. Union of India, decided in May 2022, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of placing all Section 124A proceedings in complete abeyance while a fuller constitutional review took place, according to Bar and Bench’s coverage of the order, directing the central government and all state governments not to register any fresh sedition cases and halting coercive measures, including arrests, under the provision, with the court specifically characterising the law as “engineered for a colonial regime and entirely out of sync with the modern democratic social milieu,” according to the same coverage, a striking judicial rebuke of the law’s continued relevance even as the court stopped short of formally striking it down at that stage.
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The Referral to a Larger Bench
Rather than resolving the law’s constitutionality itself, the Supreme Court subsequently referred the underlying constitutional challenge to a larger Constitution Bench, according to LiveLaw’s coverage, specifically a seven-judge bench tasked with definitively evaluating whether a law criminalising “disaffection” toward political authorities can survive scrutiny under the Constitution’s equality and personal liberty protections, a referral that meant the law’s ultimate fate would be decided by a considerably larger and more authoritative bench than had handled the original 2022 abeyance order.
The May 2026 Partial Reopening
The situation shifted somewhat in May 2026, when the Supreme Court, ruling in Kamran v. State of Madhya Pradesh, partially lifted the 2022 abeyance order, according to Drishti IAS’s coverage of the clarification, allowing courts to proceed with sedition trials specifically in cases where the accused person expressly consents to the proceedings continuing, a narrow, defendant-controlled exception to the broader freeze rather than a wholesale reopening of sedition prosecutions nationwide, meaning the underlying abeyance largely remains the default position except in this specific, consent-based circumstance.
How the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Replaced the Provision
While this litigation continued, the government’s broader criminal law recodification, covered in more depth in our earlier article, replaced Section 124A entirely with a new provision, Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which removed the specific word “sedition” and reframed the offence around acts threatening India’s sovereignty, unity, and integrity, narrowing its explicit focus toward secessionist activity and armed rebellion rather than the older law’s broader “disaffection toward government” language. Critics, including analysis published through BOOM specifically examining the change, have argued the substance of the offence remains largely as broad as before despite the relabelling, since the new provision’s language around threats to “sovereignty, unity, and integrity” could still, in principle, be applied expansively depending on how courts interpret it, meaning the underlying legal question the original sedition law raised has arguably carried over into its replacement rather than being definitively resolved by the recodification.
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Where Things Stand Now
As of the most recent available reporting, the fundamental constitutional question, whether any version of this offence, old or newly reworded, can survive full constitutional scrutiny, remains formally unresolved before the pending seven-judge Constitution Bench, meaning both the original Section 124A cases still working through the abeyance-and-consent framework and the newer BNS Section 152 provision’s own eventual legal durability remain, in a genuine sense, open questions rather than settled law.
Why This Case Illustrates a Broader Pattern
The sedition law’s unusual multi-year limbo, neither struck down nor fully operational, illustrates a broader pattern sometimes seen in Indian constitutional litigation involving genuinely difficult, high-stakes questions: rather than a single definitive ruling settling the matter quickly, the courts have instead produced a series of narrower, incremental orders, the original 2022 abeyance, the referral to a larger bench, and the 2026 consent-based partial reopening, each addressing a specific procedural question without yet resolving the underlying constitutional dispute, a pattern that provides some practical relief and clarity at each stage while leaving the fundamental question genuinely open for a considerably longer period than a single, comprehensive ruling would have taken.
Bottom Line
The Supreme Court’s May 2022 order placed India’s colonial-era sedition law in abeyance while referring its constitutionality to a seven-judge Constitution Bench, a freeze partially modified in May 2026 to allow trials to proceed only where defendants themselves consent, even as the broader constitutional question remains formally pending, and even as the government’s new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita separately replaced the old provision with a reworded Section 152 that critics argue preserves much of the same underlying breadth despite dropping the word “sedition” itself.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available Supreme Court records and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or the Supreme Court of India.
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