NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider a plea challenging the constitutional validity of the 2024 amended Uttar Pradesh law on “unlawful religious conversion”.A two-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K.V. Viswanathan took note of the submissions of senior lawyer S. Muralidhar who contended that certain provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, as amended in 2024, were “vague and overly broad” and the ambiguity infringed upon free speech and religious propagation. Without issuing a notice on the plea for the time being, the CJI said it will be heard along with other pending petitions on May 13. The top court was hearing a PIL filed by Roop Rekha Verma and others against the amended law. The petition alleged the law infringed upon Articles 14 (equality before the law), 19 (freedom of speech and expression), 21 (right to life and personal liberty), and 25 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution. Sections 2 and 3 of the Act, it claimed, were “vague, overly broad, and lack clear standards” which made it difficult to determine what constituted an offense. “This ambiguity infringes upon free speech and religious propagation, enabling arbitrary enforcement and discriminatory application. Penal laws must be precise; vague provisions violate constitutional principles by granting excessive discretion to authorities, failing to provide reasonable notice, and risking wrongful prosecution of innocent individuals,” the plea added.
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