Amid a growing clamour to bring forth laws against 'love jihad', the Haryana government on Thursday announced the formation of a drafting committee that will frame a law regarding the same. Cabinet Minister Anil Vij said that the state would also study the love jihad law formed in other states.
"A three member Drafting Committee formed to frame law on Love Jihad in Haryana comprising T L Satyaprakash IAS Secretary Home, Navdeep Sing Virk IPS ADGP and Deepak Manchanda Additional Advocate General Haryana. Committee will study the Love Jihad law formed in other states also." he took to Twitter to state.
Haryana joins several other states that have recently spoken out about 'love jihad' and announced their intention to bring forth regulations to curb the same. At the end of October, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said that the government would work to stop such relationships "by formulating a stringent law". More recently, the state on Tuesday approved the draft for a stringent law to curb unlawful conversions. The ordinance provides for a jail term of 1-5 years with Rs 15,000 penalty for forceful religious conversion.
Uttar Pradesh is however not alone. Several other states have evinced interest in bringing about a 'love jihad' law. The Karnataka and Haryana governments had earlier announced that they were mulling a similar move, and more recently, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra said that the state would soon bring in a law to "counter the problem."
Interestingly however, 'love jihad' does not seem to a term that is legally defined thus far. Union Minister of State for Home, G Kishan Reddy in reply to a written question in Parliament in February this year had said that the term 'Love Jihad' is not defined under the extant laws and no case of 'Love Jihad' has been reported by any of the central agencies.
