A re­quest has been made for Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, not to in­sti­tute sedi­tion charges against Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of his nov­el law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of this coun­try’s colo­nial-age sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion.

The re­quest, which was made by Ma­haraj’s lawyers af­ter they filed his con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, last month, was made as the law­suit came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day.

“I feel very op­ti­mistic that we would get a sat­is­fac­to­ry an­swer,” Ma­haraj’s lawyer Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, said.

How­ev­er, the lawyer not­ed that if they did not even­tu­al­ly re­ceive the as­sur­ance from Gas­pard, they would have to seek an in­junc­tion to pre-empt any crim­i­nal charge.

Dur­ing the brief hear­ing, Seep­er­sad not­ed that the case could be ex­pe­dit­ed as there were on­ly le­gal is­sues in dis­pute.

While Seep­er­sad was will­ing to set dates for the fil­ing of sub­mis­sions in the case, he could not as there was no rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al present for the hear­ing. Seep­er­sad ad­journed the case to Ju­ly 8.

Ma­haraj and SDMS Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Pun­dit Kr­ish­na Ram­bal­ly were present in court and were ex­cused from fu­ture hear­ings of the case.

In a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, Ma­haraj’s lawyers are claim­ing 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 stat­ed that Sec­tion 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, Ma­haraj’s lawyers must al­so get past 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.

They con­tend that the sav­ings clause was on­ly meant for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od of time and should be de­clared un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

“An in­de­pen­dent ju­di­cia­ry de­rived from an in­de­pen­dent sov­er­eign state can­not be legal­ly bound by colo­nial law prop­a­gat­ed by for­mer colo­nial rulers es­pe­cial­ly in cir­cum­stances where gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens strug­gled for the right to gov­ern their own af­fairs,” they said.