INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is determined to expeditiously rule on the constitutional validity of the contentious and much-misused sedition
provision under Section 124A of the IPC with the CJI D Y Chandrachud on Wednesday saying that he would consider the plea for tasking a seven
judge bench to adjudicate on it instead of a five-judge bench carrying out the exercise.The plea for reference to a 7-judge bench was made
by Senior Advocate Sidharth Dave on the ground that a five-judge bench may be coram-wise unsuited to decide the issue as more than five
decades ago, a bench of five judges had upheld the validity of Section 124A in the Kedar Nath Singh case.The CJI said he would soon take a
call on the administrative side
The three-judge bench led by the CJI scheduled the hearing on a bunch of petitions questioning the validity of Section 124A in January and
asked the parties to complete the pleadings by January 2
theprovision.A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra had backed their decision not to accede to
the requests from Attorney General R Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for deferment of the judicial scrutiny of sedition
