Home Minister pushes for nationawide anti-conversion law, again
New Delhi : Under fire from the opposition, socio-religious organisations and the media for its alleged inaction on church attacks and the RSS’ Ghar Wapsi campaign, Home Minister Rajnath Singh put the onus on respective state governments to deal with the complaints. While assuring parliamentarians that the Centre would not tolerate any attempt to disturb the communal harmony, Singh argued that while some people always expected the centre to take action this was not constitutionally possible. He reiterated that the Centre would not interfere with the rights of the states in maintaining law and order. However, Singh added that the Centre would help the states in their effort to maintain order and communal harmony. Rajnath Singh was replying to the debate in Lok Sabha on the demands for grants for his ministry.
The Home Minister made a strong pitch for an overarching anti-conversion law at the central level again. “India is the only country today which has allowed complete religious freedom without worrying about the serious threat to its demographic profile,” Rajnath argued amidst repeated objections from the Congress, TMC and Left members. “If you really want to tackle the questions being raised from time to time on conversions and communal harmony, I invite you all to support the govt in bringing an anti-conversion law with consensus from all sides”, he proposed.
Earlier, MoS parliamentary affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy objected to Congress MPs allegations that the Sangh Parivar was responsible for attacks on churches in various states. “One minority is attacking the other….what to do?…what happened in Agra….How can he make this statement?…” Rudy countered as several Congress members from Kerala questioned the government about the action taken in such attacks. Hinting that the opposition was attempting to score points on these attacks, Rajnath said he had detailed data to prove that more cases of attacks on churches and vandalisation happened during the previous regime but he was not going into those statistics as he did not want to politicise the issue.[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””][/alert]
