The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has informed the Allahabad High Court that it has filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking the transfer of all the writ petitions, related to the recent ordinance against religious conversion, from the High Court to the Supreme Court for adjudication.
Additional advocate general, Manish Goyal, representing the state government, informed the court during the hearing of a bunch of writ petitions against the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020.
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A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Saurabh Shyam Shamshery said, “In view of the statement so given, we deem it appropriate to adjourn this petition for writ. Let this petition along with other similar petitions be listed for final hearing at this stage on January 25, 2021”.
The court passed this order on a PIL filed by one Saurabh Kumar.
The anti-conversion ordinance, which was enforced in November last year, has been challenged through multiple PILs and writs in the high court.
The government recently approached the Supreme Court seeking the transfer of all the pending writ petitions from the Allahabad high court to the apex court.
In addition to it, an application was also filed in the high court on behalf of the Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives through its managing trustee Tulika Srivastava to join the writ proceedings.
The court allowed this application for the reasons mentioned therein, saying “The Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives through its Managing Trustee, Tulika Srivastava is allowed to participate in the writ proceedings as an intervenor.”
The court further directed the counsel for the intervenor to supply the grounds on which she wanted to support the writ petition to additional advocate general, Manish Goyal.
