Supreme Court agrees to hear PIL related to constitutional validity of amended law on religious conversion in UP

Supreme court hearing on conversion: The Supreme Court agreed on Friday (May 2) to consider the petition challenging the constitutional validity of the revised law of 2024 in Uttar Pradesh on the illegal conversion case.

A bench of CJI Sanjeev Khanna, Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice KV Vishwanathan, Senior Advocate S.K. Considering the arguments of Muralidhar. Advocate S. Muralidhar said, “Some provisions of the revised ‘Religion Compression Prohibition Act’ amended in the year 2024 are unclear and extremely comprehensive and this ambiguity violates freedom of expression and religion.

Although Chief Justice Sanjeev Khanna did not issue any notice on the PIL at present, he said that the matter will be heard on Tuesday (May 13, 2025) along with other pending petitions. The Supreme Court is hearing a public interest litigation filed by Lucknow resident Rukrakha Verma and others against the revised law.

Advocate filed questions on the revised law in the petition filed

The petition filed through advocate Purnima Krishna alleged that this law violates Article 14 (equality before law), 19 (speech and freedom of expression), 21 (life and personal freedom) and 25 (freedom of religion).

He claimed in the petition that sections 2 and 3 of the Act are vague, extremely comprehensive and unique standards, which makes it difficult to determine what is the crime in reality?

Punishable law should be clear and accurate- Advocate Purnima

The petition stated, “This ambiguity violates speech freedom and religious propagation, which makes it possible to implement it in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner, while punishable laws should be accurate. Intelligent provisions provide high discretionary to the officers and violate constitutional principles by taking the risk of incorrectly prosecution against innocent persons.”

The petition also said, “The main concern in this is that the 2024 amendment expands the category of authorized persons to file a complaint without including procedural security measures.” It is noteworthy that many petitions challenging the validity of laws of various states on conversion in the Supreme Court are pending.