SC declines to consider fresh plea on 'Love Jihad' law

As many as two separate petitions, one by advocate Vishal Thakre and another by PUCL, came up for consideration

The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to entertain a fresh petition against the laws to regulate inter-faith marriage and check incidents of alleged 'Love Jihad' in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian asked NGO People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) to rather go to the high courts concerned.

"We would like to have views of the High Court," the bench said, even as senior advocate Sanjay Parikh contended that similar laws were in the process of being passed in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

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Notably, acting on a plea by advocate Vishal Thakre and others, the court had on January 6 issued notice to the Uttarakhand and the Uttar Pradesh governments challenging validity of the laws.

The court, however, had then refused stay on operations of 'Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020' and 'the Uttarakhand Freedom Of Religion Act, 2018', saying the petitioners should have ideally approached the High Courts.

In their plea, Thakre and others claimed the move was against the public policy and society at large, besides curtailing fundamental rights of the citizen.

The move by the two state governments was also against the provisions of the Special Marriage Act, 1954, they claimed.

The Yogi Adityanath government's Ordinance carried maximum punishment of 10 years jail for conversion brought on fraud, deceit and misrepresentation of facts, for the purpose of marriage.