Bengaluru:
Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Friday said he was keen on an early decision on bringing a law against religious conversion in the name of “love jihad”. Joining the issue, the opposition Congress accused the ruling BJP of attempting to divert public attention from its government’s ‘failures’ and igniting communal flare.
A day after stating that his administration will take strong measures to put an end to religious conversion in the name of love jihad, Yediyurappa said the government will soon take a decision on the matter. “Already I have discussed with our senior officers and within two to three days we are going to take a decision, I want to ban that in Karnataka,” he told reporters here.
The chief minister said he was not bothered about the stand of other states and wanted to take a decision as early as possible. After consulting legal experts and Advocate General the government will take necessary steps, he added.
Reacting to this, Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly Siddaramaiah of Congress said it was nothing but BJP’s “frivolous attempt” to divert public attention from its “miserable administrative and policy failures”. Alleging that the BJP wanted to stoke communal flare for its political gains, in a series of tweets, he said, “‘Love Jihad’ is not defined in any legal document. This fact is accepted in the Parliament by @BJP4India ‘s own Minister of State for Home affairs.
“Then based on what will @BSYBJP (Yediyurappa) enact a law?” he asked. BJP wanted to mislead people with their wrong interpretation of the recent Allahabad High Court judgement, he said.
The court only observed conversion for the sake of inter-religious marriage was wrong, but did not say that inter-religious marriage itself was wrong, he maintained. The Allahabad High Court had recently said in a case that conversion just for the sake of marriage was not valid.
Karnataka Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Wednesday had said the government was considering a law against religious conversion for the sake of marriage..
