Uttar Pradesh Assembly passes amendments to 'love jihad' law, offenders to face life imprisonment

Under the amended provisions, now any person can register an FIR in conversion cases. Earlier, to give information or complaint about the case, the presence of the victim, her parents, or siblings was necessary.

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Tuesday passed the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2024, providing for a maximum punishment of life imprisonment to the offenders convicted under certain circumstances.

The Assembly passed the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2024, popularly known as the ‘love jihad’ law, which contains stringent provisions with regard to fraudulent or forced conversions.

The amended Bill provides for 20 years’ imprisonment or life sentence if it was found that conversion had taken place under threat, promise of marriage or conspiracy. It was placed in the category of most serious crime under the Bill. The original Act provided for a maximum of ten years imprisonment and fine to the violators.

Another significant amended feature of the Bill was that now any person could register an FIR in the cases pertaining to religious conversion. In the original Act, only the parents, the victims or the siblings could register the FIR.

The Bill also provides that the cases pertaining to religious conversion would not be heard by any court below the sessions court. It has also made the crime non-bailable.

Uttar Pradesh was the first state to have a law against religious conversion through deceit, force, allurement or any other fraudulent means or for the purpose of marriage. An ordinance was issued in 2020 in this regard and later the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 was adopted.

Although the Act nowhere used the term 'love jihad', the BJP leaders had maintained that it was a law to prevent what they alleged ''rising cases of Hindu girls being lured through fraudulent ways into marriage by Muslim youths''. 

Anybody wanting to convert on one's own volition to marry would have to compulsorily give an application in this regard to the concerned district magistrate two month in advance.