Despite mounting criticisms, Yogi Adityanath's government in Uttar Pradesh approved a very controversial ordinance on 24 November – which is seemingly against unlawful religious conversions, but has been repackaged as a way to combat ‘love jihad’. This law declares marriages after a conversion without permission to be null and void.
As much as ‘love jihad’ continues to be an unproven conspiracy – not just in UP but in India, generally – this law provides up to five years of rigorous imprisonment and Rs 15,000, as penalty. But the punishment is stricter for 'conversions' of minors and women of the SC/ST communities. It comes with up to 10 years of imprisonment and Rs 25,000 as penalty.
But this move shockingly comes around the same time when the Allahabad High Court struck down two previous orders by single judges of the same court that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had previously quoted as a basis for the anti-love jihad laws.
Those verdicts had held that religious conversion purely for the sake of marriage was illegal, but on 11 November, a division bench of Justices Vivek Agarwal and Pankaj Naqvi held that neither of the two rulings were "good law", as they don't consider the "liberty of two matured individuals in choosing a partner or their right to freedom of choice as to with whom they would like to live with."
What kind of a precedent is the Yogi government setting with this law that even in the court's view goes against the fundamental rights of citizens, that too without enough evidence to support the government's claims on ‘love jihad’? Tune in to The Big Story!
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