The banned Khalistani organisation ‘Sikhs For Justice’ has written Chief Justice N V Ramana an ‘open letter’ urging that the “colonial law of sedition” be repealed. Many Advocates on Record in the Supreme Court have received Gurpatwant S Pannun’s letter with the subject “Scrap Colonial “Sedition Laws”- Democratize Democratic “Khalistan Referendum.” Three alleged instances of the law of sedition being used against Sikhs are listed in the letter.
“It is an undeniable fact that the sedition laws being used against Khalistan Referendum Campaigners in India and abroad are the same laws that the British Colonial power used to suppress and curtail the Indian independence movement,” the letter states.
According to the letter, the Indian government will fail to eliminate the Khalistan Referendum due to the ineffectiveness of sedition laws in the past. “Since neither sedition laws nor draconian laws could save the USSR from balkanization,” the letter says, “India’s Balkanizing is a writing on the wall and should be allowed to take place through democratic and peaceful means of a referendum.”
“Cheif Justice Ramana now is the time for India’s apex court to decriminalise the democratic Khalistan Referendum by repealing the colonial law of sedition,” the letter says.
After the ban on the organisation ‘Sikhs For Justice’ was declared in January 2020, the UAPA Tribunal upheld the ban on the organisation ‘Sikhs For Justice’ after the same was declared an unlawful association under the UAPA Act.
“The evidence shows that the respondent Association (SJF) is working in collusion with anti-India entities and forces to achieve their goals by engaging in illegal activities. As a result, the Central Government had “sufficient cause” to declare Sikhs For Justice an “unlawful association” under Sections 3(1) and 3(3) of the Act “, the Tribunal stated in its ruling.
The government has designated Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the author of the letter to the Chief Justice of India and the organization’s founder, as a terrorist under the UAPA Act.
Under the UAPA Act, the Central Government seized his property in Punjab in September 2020. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ordered the blocking of apps, websites, and social media accounts of foreign-based “Punjab Politics TV” for having close links with Sikhs For Justice in February 2022.