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An intervention application has been filed in the Supreme Court urging it to be heard during the hearing of petitions challenging controversial state laws regulating religious conversions due to interfaith marriage.
Akhil Bhartiya Sant Samiti filed the application seeking to intervene in the petitions, in public interest, and for the limited purpose of assisting the apex court on issues arising from challenges to state freedom of religion/unlawful conversion enactments, including the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, which are under challenge in the proceedings. The application filed through advocate Atulesh Kumar requested the court to decline to entertain the challenge to the laws in the first instance and to relegate the petitioners to the jurisdiction of the High Courts. "The challenge is primarily to state enactments, which are best tested before the respective High Courts at the first instance, which are themselves a Constitutional Court of plenary writ jurisdiction," the application stated. It gave instances of other countries saying that globally, across multiple jurisdictions, through municipal law, countries prohibit unlawful or coerced conversion by targeting force, fraud, inducement, and proselytism by improper means, while preserving space for non-coercive belief and persuasion. "Nepal criminalises conversion attempts and abetment and also constitutionalises a bar on actions jeopardising another's religion, Myanmar outlaws conversion through inducement, intimidation or undue influence and uses a registration/voluntariness check, China limits proselytising in schools and bars using charitable activity to proselytise, Indonesia restricts propagation by groups officially deemed deceptive," the application stated. There are many petitions challenging the anti-conversion laws passed by the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. The pleas challenging the law stated that the laws passed by Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand against 'Love Jihad' and punishments thereof may be declared ultra vires and null and void because they disturb the basic structure of the Constitution as laid down by the law. (ANI)
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