New Delhi: The Gujarat government has told the Supreme Court that freedom of religion does not include the right to convert others, and requested the top court to vacate a high court stay on the provision of a state law that mandates prior permission of the district magistrate if a person chooses to convert their religion before marriage.
The Gujarat high court had through its orders dated August 19 and August 26, 2021 stayed the operation of section 5 of the state government’s Freedom of Religion Act, 2003.
In its affidavit submitted in response to a PIL by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, the state government said it has filed an application seeking the HC stay be revoked so that the provisions to prohibit religious conversions in Gujarat by force, allurement, or fraudulent means be implemented.
“It is submitted that the right to freedom of religion does not include a fundamental right to convert other people to a particular religion. The said right certainly does not include the right to convert an individual through fraud, deception, coercion, allurement or other such means,” it said.
The state government said the meaning and purport of the word ‘propagate’ in Article 25 of the Constitution was debated in great detail in the constituent assembly, and its inclusion was passed only after the clarification that the fundamental right under Article 25 would not include the right to convert.
It said the constitutionality of Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya Adhiniyam, 1968 and the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967 which are pertinently pari materia (on the same subject) with Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, was challenged before a constitution bench in 1977.
“This Court had held that fraudulent or induced conversion impinges upon the right to freedom of conscience of an individual apart from hampering public order and, therefore, the State was well within its power to regulate/restrict the same.”
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