NEW DELHI: Up to 224 retired bureaucrats and judicial officials, including former senior high court judges, chief clerks and DGP, have sent a letter to the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in support of the new law against religious conversions in the state. They also attacked the group of 104 retired bureaucrats, who had previously written to Yogi demanding the removal of the new law.
The letter, signed by retired IAS officer Yogendra Narain, who has served as UP Secretary General and Rajya Sabha Secretary General, describes the new law as “much needed” and that it is being misrepresented as anti-Muslim. .
Narain told TOI that he and other like-minded people were forced to write this letter to defend the law and the UP’s “duly elected chief minister” as the law itself was legally perfect and those who criticize it they could have chosen a better way to question your implementation.
“There have been several cases of forced conversions where women have been harassed or even killed. The law covers all religions, so why should there be opposition to it? It only regulates the process of conversion,” he said.
This occurs days after 104 former IAS officers wrote an open letter addressing the UP CM, demanding a revocation of the ordinance, the signatories of this letter disassociated themselves from the previous group.
“It is cause for concern that a group of retirees officials, visibly biased with an anti-system attitude despite openly posing as “ apolitical ”, they repeatedly took every opportunity to put Indian democracy, its institutions and people who legitimately hold high office before the whole world by doing wrong. they considered public statements, or writing wrong communications to various authorities, “he said.
Signed by 14 former judges, 108 retired bureaucrats, 92 retired military officers and 10 intellectuals, Monday’s letter says the Uttar Pradesh The Illegal Conversion of Religion Prohibition Ordinance of 2020 is applicable to all religions and “rightly states that marriages performed for the sole purpose of illicit conversion may be declared void.”
“The law safeguards the dignity of women involved in marriages that lead to conversions and also establishes a special provision in favor of minors, women or anyone belonging to registered castes / tribes. In a hasty generalization based on a lonely alleged lapse incident in Moradabad while the ordinance was being implemented … the law itself has been branded illegal and, in particular, anti-Muslim, “adding that it is a” shocking obsession of this biased group. stoking the communal fire by instigating religious minorities, ”he says.
The signatories to the letter have said they have faith that the UP government will take action against officials guilty of bad faith in implementing the law. Citing cases in which Hindu women were allegedly killed in the course of interreligious marriages, the letter says that for a group of former civil servants to generalize on the basis of an incident and lose sight of the cases in which women actually harassed or even murdered it’s strange”.
“The new laws reflect the changing needs of a dynamic society. A very distorted reference to the ‘Ganga-Jamuni culture’ has been given by wrongly criticizing the UP law (in the letter above). The concept of ‘Ganga-Jamuni culture’ represents the harmonious evolution between religions and the coexistence of art, culture, languages, etc. but it is certainly not about illegal conversions with criminal intent, leading to assassinations, mutilations, torture and betrayals of women in particular ”, he adds.
Narain told TOI that the law was formed on the recommendation of the State Law Commission and, while it was not itself unconstitutional, implementation could have been a problem if vigilantes took matters into their own hands. However, he added, any law is open to misuse, but then why blame the law? “Many states have conversion laws, so I didn’t understand why they had to specifically target UP,” Narain said.
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