With 12 of 475 cases filed nationally in 2014-21, WB tolerates dissent more

West Bengal seems to have a more relaxed attitude with regard to cases related to sedition laws. The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), giving figures up to 2021, says that only 12 sedition cases have been filed in West Bengal between 2014 and 2021.

The figure is just 2.5 per cent of the total 475 sedition cases filed throughout the country during the same period.

As per the NCRB report, during the same period from 2014 to 2021 just five persons were chargesheeted. But not a single person was convicted.

As per the reports, Bengal's picture was especially rosy in 2020. During that period just two sedition cases were registered in the state, which was just 2.7 per cent of the total 73 cases filed on this count in the country.

The situation in West Bengal appeared especially better when compared to states like Assam, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh which recorded a significantly higher number of sedition cases during the same period.

The figures, however, were higher when compared with those of states such as Odisha, Maharashtra, Sikkim or Tripura, which reported single-digit registered cases, or states like Meghalaya which did not report a single such case during that period.

However, there was a bad patch for the state in 2015, when West Bengal topped among all the states in sedition related arrests.

In that year, West Bengal recorded as many as 53 arrests on charges of sedition and waging war against the state, which was the highest among all Indian states and also 22.36 per cent of the total 237 arrests throughout the country on the same charges.

State government officials believe that there had been a major reason for the sudden rise in the number of sedition arrests in West Bengal in 2015. "During a major part of 2015, the investigation continued into the blast at Khagragarh in East Burdwan district of West Bengal on October 2, 2014. Probably, that was the major reason why the number of sedition related arrests suddenly increased in that year," pointed out a senior official who did not wish to be named.

Trinamool Congress legislator Tapas Roy feels that the maximum misuse of the sedition law has been in BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh and Assam, where the police filed sedition cases indiscriminately.

He added that in West Bengal the government does not believe in silencing the opposition through misuse of sedition laws. "We practice what we preach which is evident from the records of a Union government outfit," he said.

BJP's state spokesman in West Bengal Samik Bhattacharya says that the figure is just a small part and does not really reflect the true picture of how the law is misused in the state.

"West Bengal is the only state where the opposition political parties always have to approach the court to get permission for conducting peaceful public meetings and rallies. In West Bengal the state government follows two sets of rules -- one which is for the ruling party and the other for the opposition parties," he added.

Calcutta High Court counsel Kaushik Gupta explained that a person may be booked under the sedition law by any Central and state security enforcement agency.

"So it is not always necessary that in a particular year or time period the number of sedition cases in a particular state rises just because the state law enforcement agencies apply its provisions indiscriminately. But of course, generally the number of such cases is averagely lower in states where the state government applies the provisions of the law judiciously," he said.

--IANS

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