Lucknow. The Yogi Adityanath government in UP has introduced an amendment bill in the assembly to further tighten the law related to love jihad. This bill is expected to be passed today. By making the law related to love jihad more stringent, now there is a preparation to make a provision for maximum punishment of life imprisonment. Through the amendment bill, the punishment has been doubled in many crimes. Funding for religious conversion against the law is also being brought under the ambit of crime. Earlier, the Yogi government had passed the Religious Conversion Prohibition Bill in the year 2020 to stop love jihad.
The law that the Yogi government had made earlier regarding love jihad had a provision of 1 to 10 years of punishment for the crimes. In the law, conversion for marriage was declared invalid. Also, conversion by lying or cheating was considered a crime. In case of forced or fraudulent conversion, a provision of 1 to 5 years of punishment and a fine of Rs 15000 was made in the earlier law. There was a provision of a fine of Rs 25000 and a punishment of 3 to 10 years for forcibly or fraudulently converting a Dalit girl. Along with this, a provision was also made that for converting religion voluntarily, the magistrate will have to be informed 2 months in advance.
The BJP government came to power in UP in 2017. Many cases of love jihad came to light before and after that. After which the Yogi government decided to bring a law to stop it. Even after this, cases of forced or fraudulent conversion kept coming up. In such a situation, to effectively stop this, the Yogi government has taken steps towards making the punishment more stringent by changing the law.