Attorney General R. Venkataramani on Monday in the Supreme Court raised serious objections to petitions being filed in the Supreme Court against various States’ religious conversion laws.
"These are State legislations and the State High Courts are hearing them. There are petitions pending there and the same petitioners have now filed petitions in the Supreme Court… I have serious objections to that," Mr. Venkataramani submitted before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud.
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The government has also opposed the locus of Citizens for Justice and Peace, an NGO associated with activist Teesta Setalvad, in approaching the apex court against religious conversion laws.
The NGO, represented by senior advocate C.U. Singh, has argued that these State laws amount to undue interference in a person's right of choice of faith and life partner.
Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud had earlier asked the petitioners to file petitions seeking to transfer their cases pending in the various High Courts to the Supreme Court for an authoritative ruling.
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The case concerns anti-conversion enactments of nine States, including Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka.
Mr. Singh said each State's law is used by the other as a "building block" to make a more "virulent" law for itself.
The court agreed to hear all the petitions in the case on February 3.
Also read: Muslim body challenges religious conversion laws of five States in Supreme Court
One of the main petitions in the batch is by Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which has asked the Supreme Court to declare religious conversion laws, particularly of five States, as unconstitutional, saying they bring the personal decision of an individual to adopt another faith under state scrutiny.
The laws under challenge in the Jamiat petition are the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021; the Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act, 2018; the Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2019; the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021; and the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2021.
"The scrutiny by the state of a personal decision to convert is a grave assault on personal liberty of an individual and is violative of Articles 21 (right to dignity, privacy) and 25 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution," the Jamiat, represented by advocate Ejaz Maqbool, has submitted.
The religious conversion laws under challenge mandate a person proposing to convert or a priest who would preside over the ceremony to take prior permission from the local District Magistrate. Besides, the burden of proof was on the convert to prove that he or she was not forced or "allured" to change faith.
The petitions have argued that these State laws have a "chilling effect" on the right to profess and propagate one’s religion, enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution.
The apex court is also considering appeals filed by the Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh governments against the stay orders of their respective State High Courts of certain provisions in their anti-conversion statutes.
