On the concluding day of its Budget Session, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Gujarat Assembly on Thursday, 1 April, passed a bill to amend the Dharma Swatantrya (Freedom of Religion) Act 2003, reported news agency IANS.
The new amendments were introduced to enforce stricter rules for penalising unlawful religious conversion through marriage, commonly termed by the right wing as the ‘Love Jihad’ law.
The Gujarat government has claimed that there is an emerging trend to lure women towards religious conversion under the garb of marriage, promising better lifestyle and divine blessings and this is the driving force behind introducing the amendment, added the report.
The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act 2003 deals with religious conversion through alleged allurement, force or by misrepresentation or by any other fraudulent means.