Sedition by Another Name? What Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Really Changes About Sedition?

Introduction 

In July 2025, Assam Police filed an FIR against the founding editor of an independent news outlet over an article on defence policy. Among the charges: Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS)¹ 2023, the new law that replaced India’s old sedition provision. What makes this notable is that Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)² — the actual sedition law — had been put on hold by the Supreme Court back in 2022 while it was being reconsidered. Its replacement was sold to the public as decolonisation, not a continuation of the old law. 

The BNS came into force on 1 July 2024, and nowhere does it use the word “sedition.” Section 152 is titled “Act endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India,” and the government has repeatedly called it a modern, security-focused provision, nothing like its colonial-era predecessor. But in its first year, the law has already been used to file FIRs against journalists, activists, and commentators — in situations that look a lot like the ones that got Section 124A suspended in the first place. 

This piece argues that Section 152 isn’t really a reform of sedition law. It’s mostly a rebrand — one that broadens who can be held liable while stripping away the safeguards courts had built into Section 124A over the years. Here’s how we’ll get there: first, we’ll lay out what each provision actually says. Then we’ll look at how courts have handled Section 152 in its first year. After that, we’ll dig into the real differences — textual and doctrinal — between the two offences. And we’ll end with the conclusion that fixing this requires the legislature to actually redefine the offence, not just rename it. 

The Law on the Books: Section 124A IPC vs Section 152 BNS 

Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code 

Section 124A punished anyone who, through words, signs, or visible representation, tried to bring the government into hatred or contempt, or tried to stir up disaffection against it. The punishment was life imprisonment, or up to three years, plus a fine. Three explanations carved out exceptions — criticizing government policy, even sharply, wasn’t sedition as long as you were pushing for change through lawful means and weren’t trying to incite the prohibited feelings. 

In Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar,³ a Constitution Bench upheld the law but narrowed it significantly: mere criticism of the government, no matter how harsh, wouldn’t count as sedition unless it came with incitement to violence or an intent (or tendency) to cause public disorder. This “incitement requirement” became the main thing standing between the law and its use against ordinary political criticism. 

Even with that narrowing, the law kept getting used — by many accounts — against journalists, students, and political dissenters. In S.G. Vombatkere v Union of India,⁴ the Supreme Court, taking the government at its word that it would revisit the law, ordered all pending sedition trials, appeals, and proceedings paused, and told authorities not to file any new FIRs under Section 124A until further notice. The Law Commission’s 279th Report later recommended keeping sedition as an offence, but with a longer minimum sentence — seven years instead of three — plus some procedural safeguards.⁵ 

Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 

Section 152 punishes anyone who, deliberately or knowingly — through spoken or written words, signs, visible representation, electronic communication, or even financial means — tries to incite secession, armed rebellion, or “subversive activities,” or encourages separatist sentiment, or endangers India’s sovereignty, unity, and integrity. The punishment is life imprisonment, or up to seven years, plus a fine. There’s an exception clause too, closely modeled on the old Explanation 3 to Section 124A: criticizing government policy doesn’t count, as long as you’re pushing for lawful change and not trying to incite the listed activities. 

Three things are different on paper. First, the trigger has shifted — from “disaffection towards the Government” to “sovereignty, unity and integrity of India” — and now includes vague, undefined categories like “subversive activities” and “separatist activities.” Second, the minimum sentence has more than doubled, from three years to seven — which, notably, is almost exactly what the Law Commission recommended for the law the government claimed it was scrapping. Third, the list of ways you can commit the offence now explicitly includes electronic communication and financial transactions — covering digital speech and crowdfunding that obviously didn’t exist when Section 124A was written in 1870. 

III. How Courts Have Handled Section 152 So Far 

Since Section 152 is so new, there isn’t much case law interpreting it directly yet — courts have mostly leaned on the existing body of interpretation built around Section 124A. In Tejender Pal Singh @ Timma v State of Rajasthan,⁶ the Rajasthan High Court, hearing a quashing petition tied to a pro-Khalistan figure, noted that Section 152 has its roots in Section 124A and needs to be applied carefully, in line with the constitutional right to free speech — essentially importing the Kedar Nath incitement standard through judicial interpretation, even though it isn’t written into the new law itself. 

The law got real scrutiny in 2025, after Assam Police used it against the founding editor and consulting editor of an independent news outlet — plus the trust that owns it — over their reporting on defence and government matters. In Foundation for Independent Journalism v Union of India,⁷ the Supreme Court stepped in and granted interim protection, noting that a journalist’s article or video isn’t, on its face, an offence under Section 152 unless there’s proof of incitement and an imminent threat to public order. The bench — Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi — went further, asking whether the mere “potential for abuse” of Section 152 by the state could be grounds to strike it down entirely. That’s the same overbreadth concern that got Section 124A suspended in 2022. Lawyers for the petitioners argued that Section 152 is, in substance, sedition with a new coat of paint — same coercive power,⁸ different words. 

A similar story played out in Abhisar Sharma v Union of India,⁹ where the Supreme Court gave interim protection to a journalist and YouTuber facing an Assam FIR under Section 152 over a video critical of the state’s land-allotment policy — and again in a separate FIR against another senior journalist at the same outlet. In both cases, the complaint wasn’t that the speech incited violence or disorder. It was that the speech was critical of the government — exactly the pattern the Supreme Court had already flagged as a sign of misuse under Section 124A. 

Reform or Rebrand?

The real question here: does dropping the word “sedition,” along with all the talk of “decolonisation,” actually mean the state has less power over political speech? Looking closely at the text and how it’s being used, the answer seems to be no — if anything, the state’s power has grown. 

First, the offence has gotten less precise, not more. “Disaffection towards the Government,” broad as it was, at least pointed to something specific — the government established by law. “Subversive activities” and “separatist activities” aren’t defined anywhere in the BNS, which means police and trial courts get to fill in the blanks case by case. Commentators have pointed out that this vagueness doesn’t fix the overbreadth problem that troubled the Supreme Court with Section 124A — it just moves that same problem into new language.¹⁰ 

Second, you can’t call raising the minimum sentence from three years to seven a liberalizing move. That number lines up almost exactly with what the Law Commission’s 279th Report recommended — for keeping and strengthening sedition, not repealing it.¹¹ The fact that the legislature adopted the harsher sentencing meant for retaining Section 124A, while telling the public that Section 152 was its abolition, is hard to square with the stated goals of the BNS reforms. 

Third, the exception clause in Section 152 copies — almost word for word — the old disapprobation clause from Explanation 3 to Section 124A. That cuts both ways. On one hand, it keeps some textual protection for legitimate criticism of the government. On the other, it shows that the drafters basically treated the two offences as interchangeable — because a genuinely new law focused only on threats to sovereignty, secession, or armed rebellion wouldn’t need an exception built to protect ordinary political dissent. 

Fourth — and this is the big one — Section 152 drops the incitement requirement that the Supreme Court read into Section 124A in Kedar Nath Singh. That requirement was never actually in the statute; the courts added it to keep the law constitutional. Because Section 152 is a new law, that judicial fix doesn’t automatically carry over, even though courts like the one in Tejender Pal Singh have started importing it anyway, as an interpretive shortcut. Until the Supreme Court explicitly rules that the incitement standard applies to Section 152, the law remains, on paper, broader than the one it replaced.

Put it all together, and Section 152 looks like it’s doing a mostly cosmetic job: it lets the government say “we got rid of sedition” without actually shrinking — and in some ways while expanding — what the law can reach. And the pattern of prosecutions in 2025, aimed mostly at journalists covering government and defence issues, mirrors exactly the kind of misuse that was documented under Section 124A. Changing the name hasn’t changed the incentives on the ground. 

Conclusion 

The argument here is simple: Section 152 of the BNS isn’t a real break from Section 124A of the IPC. It’s a rebrand that, on the metrics that matter, expands rather than limits the state’s power over political speech. It keeps the basic structure of sedition intact. Its categories are, if anything, vaguer than the old language of “disaffection.” Its punishment has gone up in line with recommendations for keeping sedition, not scrapping it. And it drops the one judicially imposed safeguard — the incitement requirement — that gave the old law any real constitutional cover. 

The early wave of prosecutions under Section 152 — mostly against journalists and government critics — makes clear that the problems which got Section 124A suspended in 2022 haven’t gone away just because the label changed. The Foundation for Independent Journalism case, now pending before the Supreme Court, is a chance to fix that. The Court should either read an explicit incitement and imminent-threat requirement into Section 152, the way it did in Kedar Nath Singh, or declare the provision unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. Short of that — or a legislative amendment that actually defines “subversive activities” and “separatist activities” with some precision — Section 152 will keep functioning as sedition in everything but name. And in dodging that name, it’ll also dodge the scrutiny, political and judicial, that the word “sedition” has always attracted. 

Reference(S):

Table of Cases 

Abhisar Sharma v Union of India (Supreme Court of India, 2025). 

Foundation for Independent Journalism v Union of India, WP (Crl) No. 316/2025 (Supreme Court of India, order dated 12 August 2025).

Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar AIR 1962 SC 955. 

S.G. Vombatkere v Union of India (2022) 7 SCC 433. 

Tejender Pal Singh @ Timma v State of Rajasthan, S.B. Cr. Misc (Pet) No. 5005/2024 (Rajasthan High Court, 2024). 

Table of Legislation 

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 

Indian Penal Code 1860 

Bibliography 

Bhatia, Gautam, ‘Sedition by Another Name: Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita’ (Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog, 2023). 

Law Commission of India, Usage of the Law of Sedition (Report No. 279, 2023). 

¹Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, s 152 

²Indian Penal Code 1860, s 124A. 

³Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar AIR 1962 SC 955. 

⁴S.G. Vombatkere v Union of India (2022) 7 SCC 433. 

⁵Law Commission of India, Usage of the Law of Sedition (Report No. 279, 2023) paras 3.45–3.47, recommending that the minimum custodial term be raised from three to seven years. 

⁶Tejender Pal Singh @ Timma v State of Rajasthan, S.B. Cr. Misc (Pet) No. 5005/2024 (Rajasthan High Court, 2024). 

⁷Foundation for Independent Journalism v Union of India, WP (Crl) No. 316/2025 (Supreme Court of India, order dated 12 August 2025). 

⁸Foundation for Independent Journalism (n 9). 

⁹Abhisar Sharma v Union of India (Supreme Court of India, 2025). 

¹⁰Gautam Bhatia, ‘Sedition by Another Name: Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita’ (Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog, 2023). 

¹¹ibid.