Read the following passage carefully and then answer the accompanying questions employing the concepts provided in the passage:
Criminal law is the most direct expression of the relationship between a state and its citizens. Criminal sanction is indeed the most coercive method of regulating an individual‘s behaviour which any state may deploy. The degree of coercion under criminal law is qualitatively different from the outcome in a dispute under civil law. The purpose of criminal law is to forbid and prevent conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests. Feinberg explains the harm principle in following words: 'It is always a good reason in support of penal legislation that it would probably be effective in preventing (eliminating, reducing) harm to persons other than the actor and there is probably no other means that is equally effective at no greater cost to other values'.
Justice Fitzgerald observed: ‗The law of conspiracy is a branch of our jurisprudence to be narrowly watched, to be zealously regarded and never to be pressed beyond its true limits.‘ Under Section 149, mere membership of the assembly without any participation in the crime is sufficient. In the light of this statement, whether punishment of conspiracy by mere agreement and under Section 149 by mere presence be deleted from the IPC?
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