The Supreme Court on Monday said that there was a difference between freedom of religion and right of conversion, as it sought Attorney General R. Venkataramani’s assistance in the hearing of the issue seeking to curb religious conversion by force or allurement and seeking steps to penalise those engaged in such conversion.

With Attorney General Venkataramani agreeing to assist the court in the adjudication of the issue of forced  conversion, a bench of Justice M.R. Shah and Justice C.T. Ravikumar noted that there is no law or provision in Indian Penal Code to deal with forced/wrongful conversion.

The petition to curb forced conversion was moved by  an advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. However, Tamil Nadu today objected to it saying that it was politically motivated and targeted the State (Tamil Nadu). While the court was not pleased with Tamil Nadu giving a political twist to the matter but on a suggestion by a senior lawyer Sanjay Hagde it decided to retitle it as “as “issue of religious conversion” as a court’s own motion.

As Attorney General Venkataramani sought some time to go through the petitions and formulate his response, the court posted the matter for further hearing on February 7.

Irked over Tamil Nadu describing the matter as “politically motivated”, the court said, “Don’t tell us it is politically motivated. Once we take up a matter, it is decided on its merits. It is not the cause of the matter.”

Justice Shah said, “We have to consider the issue in a larger perspective.  We are not going to consider allegations or counter allegations. We are not concerned with one, two or three States but concerned with the entire country”

During the hearing, the senior advocate P. Wilson appearing for Tamil Nadu government told the court that the petitioner Upadhyay was a BJP spokesman and was using the plea of religious conversion to target the Tamil Nadu government, Justice Shah told Wilson not to give the political dimension to the issue.

However, the unyielding Wilson, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, said that it was the petitioner Upadhyay who has given political colour to the issue by levelling the allegations which are not true.  He said that the petitioner before the court had earlier filed two petitions on the same issue and were dismissed as withdrawn.

The court asked Wilson to restrict himself to the issue that it (court) is concerned with and will decide and the court can’t be compelled to decide things extraneous to the issue.