CHENNAI: What is the harm in directing the state to come up with guidelines to prevent forced conversions in government and government-aided minority schools, asked the Madras high court on Thursday.
One has a right to practise his/her religion, but no right to convert, added a vacation bench of Justice
R Mahadevan
and Justice S Ananthi.
The judges made the observations while hearing a public interest writ petition of advocate
B Jagannath
, seeking a direction to the state government to frame effective guidelines and take all necessary steps, including corrective measures, to prohibit/prevent and ban forced religious conversion by any religion in all government and aided schools coming under the government's control.
Opposing the petition, additional-advocate general
J Ravindran
assured the court that stringent action would be taken if religious conversions were reported from schools across the state.
"The petitioner has cited only two stray instances. The government has already taken appropriate action and will take stringent action in case of such activities if reported,"
Ravindran
said.
Asserting that the PIL was not maintainable, Ravindran said it was bereft of material, and should be thrown out at the stage of threshold.
"The plea has been filed with a malafide intention as it cited only two stray instances, on which, appropriate action was already taken," he argued.
However, the bench stressed the need for coming up with such a guideline and said what is the difficulty for the state in framing the guidelines.According to the petitioner, he wanted the court to direct that such guideline should be framed within a timeframe so as to prevent exploitation of young gullible and innocent children.
The petitioner further relied case of Lavanya, student
Thanjavur
minority school and said even the
Supreme Court had upheld an inquiry by the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the girl's death.
He further pointed out the incident of a teacher forcing a student to kneel down in a Kanyakumari government school. Recording the submissions, the bench adjourned the plea to May 6 to decide its maintenability.