Removal of Section 124-A of PPC 1860: Raza Rabbani asks Senate panel to take up his bill

ISLAMABAD: Former chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani has written a letter to Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Interior Senator Abdul Rehman Malik to call a meeting of the committee to take up his bill for removing colonial-era Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code. “The Bill seeking deleting a British colonial-era sedition law Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860 has been pending with the Senate’s Committee on Interior for many months,” the letter said. The letter said in the given circumstances sedition had become a moot point of concern for the entire nation.

“It will be appropriate if an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee of the Senate on Interior is called and the bill to be taken up for consideration,” he said. Rabbani was of view that the game of declaring those as traitor who struggled for the rule of law should end. He said all those who questioned the power structure of the ruling elite, be they politicians, nationalists, intellectuals, academia, students, labour or civil society members, had been dubbed traitors or security risk.