Following claims that the Anti-conversion Bill was first mooted by the Law Commission under the Congress rule, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah dug out a 2009 petition submitted by pro-BJP personalities to the then C M B S Yediyurappa to enact the law.
On November 5, 2009, Chidananda Murthy, K Narahari, B N Murthy, Jayadeva, S R Leela and Mattur Krishnamurthy, affiliated to RSS, had petitioned the government for the law.
“The Bill is a brainchild of the RSS and BJP,” Siddaramaiah said, adding that the draft submitted during the Congress rule in 2015 was based on a petition filed in 2009 when Yediyurappa was CM.
The draft was placed before the Law Department by the Commission on September 21, 2013. This was discussed by Law and Social Welfare departments and placed before the government in 2015, he said.
“We did not discuss it in the Cabinet, nor approve it. Several Bills and subjects which are approved by the CM for discussion in the Cabinet are rejected. The then Social Welfare Minister H Anjaneya had rejected the file stating that it need not be placed before the Cabinet,” he said.
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Published 23 December 2021, 17:44 IST