New Delhi: A fresh application has been moved before the Supreme Court urging that the matters related to alleged forcible religious conversions be taken up by a larger bench of five judges as they involve the interpretation of the Constitution.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud is scheduled to hear the batch of pleas on Monday against anti-conversion laws of several states regulating religious conversion due to interfaith marriages and on matters related to alleged forcible conversions.
The fresh application is filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, who is among the petitioners. He has asked the court to refer the petitions to a larger bench saying there are several questions of laws involved which require the interpretation of the Constitution.
He raised questions like whether the previous judgments of this Court interpreting Article 25(1) of the Constitution are grossly erroneous in so far as they upheld the word “propagate” would include entitlement to convert.
“Whether the word “propagate” needs to be construed in a manner which is not detrimental to fraternity, unity, dignity and national integration...,” Upadhyay’s fresh plea said.
It should also not lead to communal conflagration on account of religious communities trying to convert the weaker section of other religious
communities and
“attempting to make demographic changes as witnessed in the nine states/UTs (Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Kashmir, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh) and around 200 districts of India”, the application said.
In another application, Upadhyay has sought modification of the order dated January 9 in which the apex court had directed that the matter be listed under the title of “In Re: The issue of Religious conversion” to the original title.
On January 16, the top court asked the parties challenging the anti-conversion laws of several states to file a common petition seeking the transfer of cases on the issue from various high courts to the apex court. It had asked senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for one of the parties, to file a common petition seeking the transfer of all the pleas from high courts to the top court.
The top court had taken note of the submission of senior advocate Dushyant Dave that one of the petitions, filed by Upadhyay, casts aspersions on Christians and Muslims and asked senior lawyer Arvind Datar, appearing for Upadhyay, to file a formal plea for deletion of the “objectionable portions”.
Datar, however, said he was not pressing the alleged contents.
The plea by Upadhyay against alleged “forceful religious conversions” was earlier being heard by another bench led by Justice MR Shah before it was transferred to the bench headed by the CJI recently.
Attorney General R Venkataramani, who is assisting the bench in one of the matters, had said the high courts should be permitted to continue with the hearing of petitions challenging the local laws.