Court caseAIR 1962 SC 955

Kedar Nath Singh, a member of the Forward Communist Party in Bihar, made a speech attacking the Congress government as 'dogs of the CID' and calling for revolution to overthrow the 'Congress goondas'. He was convicted of sedition under section 124A and under section 505 IPC. Conflicting High Court decisions existed on the validity of section 124A: the Federal Court in Niharendu Dutt Majumdar (1942) had read it as requiring a tendency to disorder, while the Privy Council in Sadashiv Narayan Bhalerao (1947) had held that mere excitement of disaffection sufficed.

Sinha CJ upheld the constitutionality of section 124A but confined it. Where two interpretations are possible, the Court adopts the one that saves the provision. 'Government established by law' is the visible symbol of the State, and its subversion threatens the State's existence; so the section, read as penalising only words with the intention or tendency to create public disorder or disturbance of law and order, or to incite violence, is a reasonable restriction in the interests of public order under Article 19(2). Strong criticism of government measures, however strongly worded, without exciting feelings of enmity and disloyalty that import the idea of a tendency to public disorder, is not sedition. The Court followed the Federal Court's view in Niharendu Dutt Majumdar rather than the Privy Council's.