-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today asked all authorities to stick to the guidelines laid down by a Constitution bench 54 years ago while invoking the sedition law. The five-judge bench had ruled in 1962 that the sedition law could be activated only if "violence and public disorder" had been incited. The directive today came against a backdrop of complaints that sedition cases were being filed indiscriminately to crush dissent and...

-PTI The observation came as Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an NGO, said sedition was a serious offence and the law on it was being grossly misused for stifling dissent. New Delhi: sedition or defamation cases cannot be slapped on anyone criticising the government, the Supreme Court on Monday said in a clear message. “Someone making a statement to criticise the government does not invoke an offence under sedition or defamation law. We...

-The Hindu Of the 147 cases registered in 2015, 63 were from the region; Assam recorded the highest number. Kolkata: The seven States of the northeast account for about 42 per cent of the total ‘offences against State’ registered in the country in 2015 according to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NRCB). Across the country, 147 cases were registered in 2015 of which 63 are from the seven northeast...

-Livemint.com NGO Common Cause said in a petition that governments and law enforcement agencies had abused sedition laws to gag dissent, suppress freedom of speech and expression and to muzzle critical voices New Delhi: Common Cause, a non-governmental organization, on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court, alleging misuse and misapplication of sedition laws by successive governments, leading to routine persecution of students, journalists and intellectuals engaged in social activism. Common Cause said in...

-Livemint.com Economist Joseph Stiglitz says govt clampdown on NGOs such as Greenpeace and Ford Foundation and the JNU row shine a poor light on India globally Bengaluru: Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has a blunt message for Prime Minster Narendra Modi: India has an image problem after the government’s clampdown on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and its actions against students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). “Some issues have got a lot of public...