Bombay High Court seeks State's response to PIL against Maharashtra government decision to track inter-religious marriages

The Bombay High Court Wednesday directed the Maharashtra government to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition challenging a State government resolution to set up an Inter-Faith Marriage Family Coordination Committee to monitor inter-religious marriages in Maharashtra..The government resolution was passed by the Maharashtra government in December 2022. .A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice Arif Doctor issued notice to the State and directed it to file its response to the plea within two weeks and posted the matter for hearing after three weeks. .The petition was filed by four non-governmental organisations (NGOs), namely Citizens for Justice and Peace, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Forum against oppression of women, and Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy..The NGOs submitted that the Court to issue directions against the implementation of the government resolution..The said resolution had appointed the Minister heading the State’s women and child development ministry as the head of the committee..The plea, filed through advocate Rishika Agarwal, contended that the committee's formation was discriminatory against all women and against particular religious communities.It added that the committee encouraged a divide among people instead of fostering harmony and co-existence amongst diverse religious sects. “By using the inherently questionable protection of women as a paradigm and tracing inter-religious relationships only through women, the Maharashtra government is displaying discrimination on basis of gender as also denying women their own agency and choice,” the petition stated. In view of this, the rights of women under Articles 14 (right to equality), 15 (prohibition of discrimination on the ground of religion, race, caste, gender, or place of birth), 19 (freedom of speech and expression) and 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution were being violated, the plea added. .The petition also contended that the resolution failed to place any measures to protect the data and information collected by the committee. “There is no security and accountability provided in terms of data collection, making it exceptionally vulnerable to be misused, apart from being a direct violation of the fundamental right to privacy of two consenting married adults” the plea stated. .The petition further emphasized that there had been no prior research on the actual need for constituting such a committee. It added that the resolution was a violation of the right to privacy. Even if it were to be accepted as reasonable, the same ought to have been done by a legislation and not through an executive decision, the petitioners contended.“The right to privacy guaranteed under Constitution of India is not taken away merely because the woman has married outside her faith”, the petition stated further. .On a related note, a writ petition seeking similar reliefs has also been filed by Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Rais Shaikh from the Samajwadi Party. The High Court earlier granted liberty to Shaikh to convert the writ petition into a PIL..How did media see petition before we saw it? Bombay High Court on plea challenging inter-faith marriage committee