Maharashtra will bring in a bill to enact an anti-conversion law in the next session of the legislature, minister of state for home Pankaj Bhoyar said in the state's upper house on Monday.
"The government sought a report from the director general of the police, and that has been submitted. In the next session of the state legislature (the winter session as per convention) the government will table the anti-conversion bill. Maharashtra will be the 11th state to enact such a law," said Bhoyar, a BJP leader, speaking during the ongoing monsoon session.
The announcement gains significance as it comes from the MoS for home affairs, the ministry that is responsible for law and order. This is less than a week after revenue minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule not only spoke about enacting a “strict” law but also about demolishing what he termed unauthorised churches, especially in tribal districts, in the next six months.
The move by the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP government towards such a law comes after BJP MLAs alleged that tribals were being converted through illegal churches “built using foreign funding”. They did not specify how many such churches had been built or where the funding came from.
They demanded a mechanism to bar converted tribals from availing benefits under welfare schemes meant for Scheduled Castes (SCs) too.
{{/usCountry}}They demanded a mechanism to bar converted tribals from availing benefits under welfare schemes meant for Scheduled Castes (SCs) too.
{{/usCountry}}BJP's Anup Agarwal claimed that the number of illegal churches in tribal districts such as Palghar and Nandurbar is “mounting stupendously”. Villages with a population of around 2,000 have half a dozen churches, he claimed. The conversion is done through threats and luring through medical help, he furtehr alleged.
In reply, revenue minister Bawankule had said, “There is a report of the home department on the conversion through allurement and threat, and we have taken cognisance of it... There are orders issued in May 2011 and May 2018 related to the removal of the religious structures. The divisional commissioners would be asked to chalk out plans for the removal of these structures in six months.”
This isn’t the first time the BJP-led Mahayuti government has sought action against alleged forced religious conversions. In March, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had advocated the need for a “love jihad” law in Maharashtra, saying the government had received over 100,000 complaints of such cases.
Love jihad is a term used by Hindu nationalists who believe Muslim men are “luring” Hindu women to marry them and convert them to Islam.