High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has struck down el­e­ments of this coun­try's colo­nial-age sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a 50 page judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain this morn­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that Sec­tions 3 and 4 of the leg­is­la­tion, which pre­scribe the of­fence of sedi­tion, are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ruled that the leg­is­la­tion is vague, un­cer­tain and can lead to ar­bi­trary ap­pli­ca­tion.

He al­so ruled that the leg­is­la­tion is not com­pat­i­ble with a sov­er­eign de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state as it lim­its con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion and free­dom of the press.

The nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge was brought by for­mer sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), the late Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, be­fore his death in No­vem­ber, last year.

In the law­suit, Ma­haraj's lawyers con­tend­ed that the leg­is­la­tion—which was passed in 1920 and amend­ed sev­er­al times be­tween 1961 and 1976—breached cit­i­zens' con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion, free­dom of the press and free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion and as­sem­bly.

They claimed that Sec­tions 3 and 6 of the leg­is­la­tion, which de­fines a sedi­tious in­ten­tion and the pub­li­ca­tion of such, is un­pre­dictable and al­lows for dis­crim­i­na­tion.

In or­der to suc­ceed in the claim, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad need­ed to agree to by­pass the leg­is­la­tion's sav­ing clause, which pre­cludes it from ju­di­cial in­ter­pre­ta­tion ex­cept in sce­nar­ios when it can be found in­com­pat­i­ble with the pro­vi­sions of the con­sti­tu­tion.

Ma­haraj's lawyers con­tend­ed that the sav­ings clause was on­ly meant for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od of time and should be de­clared un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice called on Jus­tice Seep­er­sad to re­ject the law­suit as it claimed that it may lead to a moun­tain of lit­i­ga­tion from per­sons at­tempt­ing to avoid be­ing pros­e­cut­ed.

Al­though it ad­mit­ted that sedi­tion laws have been re­moved in some coun­tries, it not­ed that they still ex­ist in South Africa and Cana­da.

"The right to crit­i­cise does not mean you can­not at­tract the penal­ties every State has put in place to pro­tect its in­tegri­ty," Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, who led the le­gal team for the AG's Of­fice, said in his sub­mis­sions in the case.

Ma­haraj filed the law­suit af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants on the SDMS's me­dia house Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices, af­ter Ma­haraj made a se­ries of in­cen­di­ary state­ments on his Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme on TV Jaagri­ti on April 15, 2019.

In the broad­cast, Ma­haraj had claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go were lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

No crim­i­nal charges were brought against him, al­though he had sug­gest­ed that such was in­evitable while ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers dur­ing the SDMS In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions.

Sev­er­al trade unions con­sid­ered join­ing Ma­haraj's claim af­ter Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke was charged with sedi­tion over state­ments he made dur­ing a protest at TSTT, last year. How­ev­er, no one stepped for­ward to for­mal­ly join the case when it went on tri­al, last De­cem­ber.

Af­ter Ma­haraj passed away on No­vem­ber 16, his son Vi­jay ap­plied to be sub­sti­tut­ed as the claimant in the law­suit.

Ma­haraj was rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Jagdeo Singh, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Rhea Khan. The AG's Of­fice was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Josephi­na Bap­tiste-Mo­hammed and Sean Julien.