The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led government in Tamil Nadu has apprised the Supreme Court that no incident of forceful conversion has been reported in the southern state in several years.
In an affidavit before the Apex Court, the Tamil Nadu government submitted that citizens of the country should be allowed freely to choose their religion and that it would not be appropriate for the government to put spokes to their personal belief and privacy.
Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay had filed a petition in the Apex Court seeking CBI probe into the alleged cases of forcible conversions in Tamil Nadu and directions to the Law Commission of India to prepare a draft on anti-conversion law.
Stating that anti-conversion laws were prone to misuse against minorities, the government of Tamil Nadu said there was no data on convictions under the various anti-conversion laws of the states.
Terming the plea filed by Upadhyay as a ‘religiously-motivated’ petition, the state government said the citizens were at liberty to choose the religion they wanted to follow. It further accused the petitioner of trying to target the Christian missionaries.
The affidavit said that Article 25 of the Constitution guaranteed every citizen the right to propagate his religion. Therefore, the acts of missionaries spreading Christianity by itself could not be seen as something against law. But if their act of spreading their religion was against the public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of Part III of the Constitution (relating to fundamental rights), it had to be viewed seriously, noted the state government.
Regarding Tamil Nadu, it said the state has not reported any incident of forceful conversion in the past many years.