MP FREEDOM OF RELIGION BILL

Subject : Legislation

Context : State Home minister announced that Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya Vidheyak (Freedom of Religion bill) 2020 will be tabled in the assembly.

Concept :

• The bill will have provisions of rigorous imprisonment up to five years on forcible marriage, seduction and forced conversions, and the charge will be cognisable and non-bailable.
• The bill would also have provisions to declare forced marriage and conversions null and void. Collaborators in the crime would be prosecuted as the ‘main accused’.
• The name of the bill seems to be an echo of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 1968, which was enacted by the then Congress government to stop conversion through “allurement, force or fraud”.
• In 2006, the state government unsuccessfully tried to amend it to make it mandatory for those wishing to convert, and for the religious leader, to inform the district magistrate a month in advance.
• The clause will now be a key aspect of the proposed Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya Vidheyak 2020.
• The Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam and Karnataka governments have also spoken of such a law, but MP has taken the first step.