The Supreme Court on Monday asked the parties challenging the anti-conversion laws of several States to file a common petition seeking transfer of cases on the issue from various High Courts to the apex court.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala asked senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, appearing for one of the parties, to file a common petition seeking transfer of all the pleas from High Courts to the top court.
“In view of the pendency of matters before diverse High Courts, a transfer petition will be filed before this court for tagging and transferring of all cases before this court. List the matters after two weeks,” the bench said.
In the meantime, it took note of the submission of senior advocate Dushyant Dave that one of the petitions, filed by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay, casts aspersions on Christians and Muslims and asked senior lawyer Arvind Datar, appearing for Upadhyay, to file a formal plea for deletion of the “objectionable portions”.
Datar, however, said he was not pressing the alleged contents.
The plea by Upadhyay against alleged “forceful religious conversions” was earlier being heard by another bench led by Justice MR Shah before it was transferred to the bench headed by the CJI
recently.
Attorney General R Venkataramani, who is assisting the bench in one of the matters, said the High Courts should be permitted to continue with the hearing of petitions challenging the local laws.
“We are not transferring the cases. Mr Attorney (General), we will hear you on this as well,” the CJI said.