No religion one’s right, says Bombay High Court

The order may have ramifications as the government may have to have a separate column in government surveys where information about a person’s religion is sought. It may also result in the government press getting request to notify that they don’t belong to any religion.

Updated on: Sep 26, 2014, 19:45:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Bombay high court has upheld a citizen’s right to claim of “no religion” and asked the government to notify a person’s wish to disown his or her religion.

The order may have ramifications as the government may have to have a separate column in government surveys where information about a person’s religion is sought. It may also result in the government press getting request to notify that they don’t belong to any religion.

The court issued the order while disposing off the petition filed by Full Gospel Church of God which wanted the government to notify that its 4,000 members were not Christians and they belong to “no religion”.

The government press, however, refused to issue the notification claiming that “no religion” cannot be treated as a religion or any form of religion.

The petitioners claimed that the government’s contention was wrong as Article 25 of the Constitution allows a person to choose his or her conscience and religion.

The court agreed with the view of the petitioners and said: “The state has no religion. There is a complete freedom for every individual to decide whether he wants to adopt or profess any religion or not. He may not believe in any religion. If he is professing a particular region, he can give up the reglion and claim that he does not belong to any religion. There is no law which compels a citizen or any individual to have a religion”.

The court also said that the right to conscience allows a person to proclaim that he does not want to practice, profess and propagate any religion and he is an “atheist”.

And added that no authority can infringe on this right of a person and cannot ask a person which religion he belongs to. “He (a person) cannot to be compelled to state that he professes a particular religion,” the court said.

In conclusion, the court said the government press cannot deny a request of a person to declare in a gazette that he does not belong to any religion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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