The Supreme Court has asked the Rajasthan government to respond to a plea challenging the constitutional validity of its 2025 anti-conversion law. The petition claims the law is “ultra vires and unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court in New Delhi on Monday issued a notice to the Rajasthan government, asking it to give its reply on a petition that challenges the state’s new 2025 law on illegal religious conversions. The case was heard by a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih.
The petition was filed by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, and the bench has now tagged this plea with other similar petitions already pending before the court.
These other petitions also question the constitutional validity of the Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2025.
The Supreme Court had earlier agreed to hear a few other similar cases and had already asked the Rajasthan government to file its responses.
During Monday’s hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the bench that many similar matters are already pending before the apex court. The petitioner has requested the Supreme Court to declare the 2025 Act
“ultra vires and unconstitutional”.
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The Rajasthan law includes some of the strictest provisions in the country. It allows punishment ranging from 20 years to life imprisonment for mass conversions done through deception, and a jail term of seven to 14 years for conversions carried out by fraudulent means.
The law also provides stronger penalties when the victim belongs to a vulnerable group. If a minor, woman, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, or person with disability is converted through deceit, the punishment can be 10 to 20 years in jail with a minimum fine of Rs 10 lakh.
In September, a different bench of the Supreme Court had asked several states to submit their response to petitions that demanded a stay on their anti-conversion laws.
At that time, the court had clearly said that it would look into the request for staying these laws only after receiving the states’ replies.
That bench was dealing with a larger group of petitions that question the constitutional validity of the anti-conversion laws introduced by many states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Karnataka.
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