Uttarakhand planning to enact UP-like stringent anti-conversion law

The Pushkar Singh Dhami government has sought the proposal, apprehending the worsening of communal amity amid demographic changes in some regions of the state.

Uttarakhand Director General of Police Ashok Kumar on Saturday said Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recently asked the Police Department to put up a proposal for enacting a more stringent anti-conversion law.

Accordingly, the Police Department has forwarded a two-page proposal to the government to amend the state’s anti-conversion law on the line of that for Uttar Pradesh.

He said the police has recommended to the government to make the acts of forcible religious conversion a cognisable offence with a sentence of a minimum three-year jail term to the maximum of 10 years along with a fine of Rs 25,000.

He said the state’s current law on the issue makes the forcible conversion a non-cognisable offence requiring the complaint to file a complaint in a court seeking its directions to the police to register an FIR.

But the state’s new proposal seeks to make the forced religious conversion a cognisable offence, authorising police to lodge an FIR on its own without waiting for any court direction.

Additional Chief Secretary Abhinav Kumar of Chief Minister Dhami said that the police proposal is being examined currently.

The government’s decision to tighten the anti-conversion law comes in the wake of an attack by miscreants at a church in Roorkee of Haridwar district for allegedly promoting mass conversion.

Last month, the state government had asked police to act against the consistent migration by the people of a particular community amid the rising population of another community in a particular region of the state.

In this context, the state government had asked the police to identify the affected districts and act against the anti-social elements living there.

The police have also been asked to prepare a list of anti-social elements with criminal antecedents who have settled in those affected districts of the state after migrating from outside.

The police have been asked to prepare a record of such people after verifying their native places.

The districts magistrates of these regions too have been asked to keep a tab on illegal sale purchase of land in their areas and ensure that no land transaction takes place under duress.