In its separate plea filed in the top court, Samastha Kerala Jamiathul Ulema, a religious organisation of Sunni Muslim scholars and clerics in Kerala, has claimed the Act was a “blatant intrusion” into the rights of a religious denomination to manage its own affairs in the matter of religion.Jawed’s plea alleged the Act imposed “arbitrary restrictions” on Waqf properties and their management, undermining the Muslim community’s religious autonomy.The petition, filed through advocate Anas Tanwir, said the law discriminated against the Muslim community by “imposing restrictions that are not present in the governance of other religious endowments”.In a separate plea, Owaisi said it took away from Waqfs various protection which are accorded to Waqfs, and Hindus, Jain and Sikh religious and charitable endowments alike.”This diminishing of the protection given to Waqfs while retaining them for religious and charitable endowments of other religions constitutes hostile discrimination against Muslims and is violative of Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution, which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of religion,” said Owaisi’s plea, filed through advocate Lzafeer Ahmad.NGO Association for the Protection of Civil Rights also filed a petition in the apex court challenging the constitutional validity of the Act.AAP MLA Khan sought the law declared as unconstitutional, being violative of “Articles 14, 15, 21, 25, 26, 29, 30 and 300-A of the Constitution.”The Supreme Court is also scheduled to hear on April 16, a batch of pleas relating to religious conversions.While some pleas have challenged the anti-conversion laws in several states, another petition has sought a relief against forced religious conversions.The April 16 causelist on the apex court website shows the matter would come up before a bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan.During the hearing in one of the pleas in January 2023, the apex court observed religious conversions was a serious issue and should not be given a political colour.It had sought the assistance of attorney general R Venkataramani on a plea seeking direction to the Centre and states to take stringent steps to control the alleged fraudulent religious conversions.The plea sought a check on religious conversions through “intimidation, threatening, deceivingly luring through gifts and monetary benefits”.The top court had in 2023 asked the parties challenging the anti-conversion laws of several states to file a common petition for the transfer of cases on the issue from the high courts to the apex court.It noted there were at least five such pleas “before the Allahabad High Court; seven before the Madhya Pradesh High Court; two each before the Gujarat and Jharkhand High Courts; three before the Himachal Pradesh and one each before Karnataka and Uttarakhand High Courts”.There were also two separate petitions filed by the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh challenging the interim orders of the respective high courts staying certain provisions of their laws on conversion.Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind also moved the apex court against the anti-conversion laws of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and argued they were enacted to “harass” interfaith couples and implicate them in criminal cases.The Muslim body said the provisions of all the local laws of the five states force a person to disclose their faith and, consequently, invade their privacy.
Source link
