Madhya Pradesh to move top court to penalise interfaith marriages

Jabalpur: The Madhya Pradesh administration has decided to move the Supreme Court challenging the high court's interim order that forbids the state from prosecuting interfaith couples who married without informing without district magistrate, PTI reported.

The state government is going to move the Supreme Court to challenge the high court's interim order, which restrains it from prosecuting under section 10 of the MPFRA adults who solemnise their marriage on their own volition," Advocate General Prashant Singh told PTI on Sunday.

Under section 10 of the MP Freedom of Religion Act (MPFRA), the government should not prosecute adults who solemnise their marriage on their own volition, the high court has ordered.

But a division bench of Justices Sujoy Paul and PC Gupta on November 14 observed that section 10, which makes it obligatory for a citizen desiring (religious) conversion to give a (prior) declaration in this regard to the district magistrate, is "in our opinion ex facie, unconstitutional in the teeth of aforesaid judgments of this court".Religious conversions by misrepresentation, allurement, use of threat of force, undue influence, coercion, marriage or by any other fraudulent means were forbidden by the MPFRA.

A bunch of seven petitions have challenged the provisions of the MPFRA, 2021, and the high court pronounced the interim order hearing the same. The petitioners sought interim relief to restrain the state from prosecuting anyone under the Act.

Further, the court granted the state government three weeks to file its para-wise reply to the petitions and 21 days for the petitioners to file a rejoinder.