- Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, has long been dead. It was struck down as unconstitutional six years ago by the Supreme Court, which found that it “arbitrarily, excessively and disproportionately invades the right of free speech”.
- And yet, this draconian piece of dead law has had an astonishing afterlife in police stations across the country, leading to the persecution of several citizens for “menacing” or “offensive” online posts.
- According to a plea filed by an NGO in the Supreme Court, as many as 745 cases are active before district courts in 11 states, with the accused being prosecuted for offences under the invalid law.
Early this month, the Supreme Court bench hearing the plea was moved to seek a response from the Centre on what it called a “shocking state of affairs”. The Centre has written to state governments, asking them to pass on the memo to the police force — and withdraw all cases that may have been filed under Section 66A.
Introduced by the UPA government in 2008, the amendment to the IT Act gave the government power to arrest and imprison an individual for allegedly “offensive and menacing” online posts, and was passed without discussion in Parliament.
The court’s 2015 decision in Shreya Singhal vs Union of India was a landmark judicial pushback against state encroachment on freedom of speech and expression. “Section 66A is cast so widely that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it …and if it is to withstand the test of constitutionality, the chilling effect on free speech would be total,” it said.
The gap between the court’s judgment and the pile of Section 66A cases is, perhaps, explained by a political climate in which free speech, dissent and legitimate criticism are seen as exercises in bad faith, and existing laws are wielded as weapons to arrest journalists and citizens for a tweet or a slogan or a Facebook post.
Even a large body of progressive judgments by constitutional courts has not prevented the blatant misuse of the law of sedition or come in the way of courts’ reluctance to grant bail to accused.
In the face of a political class that does not shrink from arrogating more powers to regulate speech, the police marches to the tune of vendetta, and even judicial wisdom is ignored. The Centre’s note to the states is welcome — but regular monitoring is the only way to ensure that the law is implemented in letter and spirit.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.