Senior advocate Cleofato Almeida Coutinho asked why Goa, a state with no cases of forced conversion, needed a strident anti-conversion law. He suggested that Goa needed an anti-superstition statute instead.
Prabhakar Timble, educationist and former State Election Commissioner, warned that an anti-conversion law would create nurseries for self-appointed enforcers rather than solve any social problem, and Uday Bhembre, who has spent a lifetime participating in Goan public debate, pointed out to everyone that the Constitution already guarantees the right to change one’s religion.
But it was not these sane and mature voices that made Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, who had chaired the 26 August Cabinet meeting which cleared the Goa Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2026, then five days later, minutes before the monsoon session of the Legislative Assembly opened, remove it from the Business List.