BHOPAL/BENGALURU: The club of BJP-governed states contemplating laws against “love jihad” grew to four on Monday, with MP already “making legal arrangements to check this” and Karnataka waiting for UP and Haryana to finalise theirs so that it can study and decide what provisions to adopt.
“There will be no jihad in the name of love, and if anybody dares to, then action will be taken,” MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on the eve of bypolls to 28 assembly constituencies. “My government will not allow fanaticism. Whoever does so will face the consequences.” Three days ago, BJP’s Bhopal MP Pragya Thakur had demanded a law to “protect Hindu girls from love jihad”.
Referring to the recent murder of a 21-year-old college girl in Ballabhgarh by a suitor she had spurned, Pragya claimed to be getting 10 to 15 complaints on “love jihad” every day. “Those who do this are irreligious people,” she said. “There should be a strict law to stop this and such people should be severely punished.”
Karnataka home minister Basavaraj Bommai told TOI that the state government had “taken note of recent incidents of communal tension over religious conversions” in Dakhina Kannada, Udupi and some other districts. "Let us see what the UP and Haryana governments will do. We’ll study their laws before adopting them.’’