The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta sought a response from the state government on a plea filed by the Jaipur Catholic Welfare Society.
"We have raised issues of legislative competence as well as excessiveness in terms of constitutional limitations," senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for the petitioner, said.
The court pointed out that petitions raising similar issue were pending consideration before the top court.
"We have raised an entirely different question," Dhavan said.
"We will issue notice and call the other side and then we will hear you," the bench said and fixed the matter for hearing after four weeks.
The court tagged the plea with the pending petitions raising similar issue.
On November 3, the court agreed to hear two petitions challenging the validity of several provisions of the law against illegal religious conversions that came into force in Rajasthan.
The court issued notice to the Rajasthan government seeking its response within four weeks on the pleas against the 2025 Act that was passed by the state Assembly in September.
In September, another bench of the court sought the stand of several states on separate pleas seeking a stay on their respective anti-conversion laws.
The court had then made it clear that it would consider the prayer for staying the operation of such laws once the replies were filed.
The court was then dealing with a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of anti-conversion laws enacted by several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka.