The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday decided to consider a plea challenging the constitutional validity of the 2024, amended Uttar Pradesh law on “unlawful religious conversion”.
A bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Vishwanathan did not issue a notice on the plea of Roop Rekha Verma.
The court said it will be heard along with other pending petitions on May 13.
The plea, filed through advocate Purnima Krishna, alleged the law infringed upon Articles 14 (Equality before the law), 19 (Freedom of speech and expression), 21 (Right to life and personal liberty), and 25 (Freedom of religion) of the Constitution.
Senior advocate S Muralidhar for the petitioner said certain provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, as amended in 2024, were “vague and overly broad” and the ambiguity infringed upon free speech and religious propagation.
Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind, along with others have already challenged validity of laws passed by Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and others to check religious conversions specially for marriage.
The Centre had earlier favoured the laws to check illegal conversion, saying those were necessary to protect "cherished rights of vulnerable sections of the society including women and economically and socially backward classes".
It had asserted that the right to freedom of religion does not include a fundamental right to convert other people to a particular religion.
Defending the anti-conversion laws, passed by various state governments, advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay earlier before the court contended thousands of Hindus were being unlawfully converted to other religions every day.