SC notice to govt as church body challenges anti-conversion laws

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from Centre and states on a petition by National Council of Churches alleging freedom of religion laws enacted by states violate citizens’ fundamental rights by criminalising voluntary and conscience-based conversions and arguing that prior govt-approval for conversion violates individuals’ right to privacy.

One of the laws challenged by the association is the nearly 60-year-old Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967. Madhya Pradesh had enacted Chhattisgarh Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam in 1968 to prevent large-scale conversion of tribals.

SC had upheld the constitutional validity of the Orissa and MP laws in 1977 in Rev Stanislaus vs State of MP case and said while the right to propagate religion is a fundamental right, it does not include right to convert.

Arunachal had enacted a similar law in 1978; Gujarat in 2003; Himachal in 2007; Jharkhand in 2017; Uttarakhand in 2018; MP, UP and Karnataka in 2021; and Haryana in 2022. Given the challenges to state freedom of religion laws in several HCs, SC had transferred all petitions to itself in 2023. Rajasthan passed freedom of religion law in 2025.

Challenging all the laws, the churches association, through senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, said the laws presume all conversions happen through allurement, fraud or coercion and hence call for prior intimation and inquiry and permission from a district magistrate, thus compelling individuals to justify personal decisions.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta said states have sufficient basis to enact these laws and that a constitution bench of SC has already approved the constitutional validity of these laws. That decision covers the pending cases as well as this fresh one, he held.

The petitioner said the laws have deliberately defined conversion, allurement and inducement vaguely to give uncanalised discretion to the authorities, which ‘produces a chilling effect on free speech, religious propagation’. The association said stricter provisions relating to conversion of women in freedom of religion laws “deny women equal decisional autonomy”.

The petitioner said, “Implementation of the impugned Acts across states reveals a uniform pattern of misuse. Routine worship, prayer meetings, charitable activities and interfaith marriages are criminalised through expansive interpretations of ‘allurement’ and ‘inducement’.”

“Vigilante groups function as de facto enforcers, while police authorities act mechanically on complaints without independent scrutiny. This state-enabled vigilantism legitimises social hostility, instils fear among minority communities, thereby corroding the secular fabric of the Constitution,” it said.


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