The Supreme Court is set to examine if abusive language against public figures on social media can constitute sedition leading to a person being booked under the law as it admitted a plea by a local Madhya Pradesh politician who had lashed out at chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on Facebook.

A bench of Justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan admitted a plea filed by a former chairman of the municipal corporation of Shivpuri who had in a post allegedly abused the CM for not taking steps to provide water in the drought-hit district.

In the course of hearing the case the SC could consider arguments for making the sedition law less open-ended than it is at present which encourages its indiscriminate use. The recent decision of Delhi police to book student organisers of an "anti-national" meeting in JNU for sedition kicked up a major controversy over the use of the law.

The state police had lodged an FIR against Jagmohan Singh Sengar on a complaint by a BJP worker. He was booked under various sections of the IPC for spreading obscenity, insulting a public figure and also sedition.