Delhi High Court refuses to consider PIL to regulate religious conversions, says religion is a matter of personal belief

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to consider a PIL for making guidelines to regulate and stop religious conversion saying religion is a personal belief and whether to convert to a different faith or not was her choice.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar persuaded advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay to withdraw the petition as it did not want to reject it.

On this, Upadhyay preferred to withdraw it to make a representation to the government.

As soon as the matter came up for consideration, the bench said professing a religion was a matter of personal belief and whether to convert to a different religion was an individual's choice.

"Tell us how can we regulate it? What will we regulate? If someone is threatening someone or intimidating someone, it is an offence under the Indian Penal Code," the bench said.

The court also said that there was no reason for an individual to succumb to threats, intimidation or allurement to convert to a different faith.

In his plea, had contended that many individuals, NGOs and institutions are converting downtrodden persons, particularly of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe community, by "intimidating, threatening, luring by monetary benefits and by other acts, including miracle healing, black magic and more".

In his petition, Upadhyay said India was a victim of religious conversions for many centuries. It was necessary to state with dismay that the government has done little or nothing to stop religious conversions by force and luring gifts and money etc.

“Therefore, it is the duty of the State to take appropriate steps to stop religious conversion to of socially economically downtrodden men, women and children, particularly of the SC-ST community, being done by intimidating, threatening, deceivingly luring gifts and other monetary benefits and using miracles and black magic,” he contended.

He claimed the situation was alarming as the mass religious conversion of the socially economically downtrodden men, women and children, and, in particular of the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe community, was on the rise in the last 20 years. Upadhyay feared that Hindus will become the minority in the country since as per the 2011 census, Hindus constituted 79 per cent of the population down from 86 per cent in 2001.