The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider complaints by Tamil Nadu government and other parties against advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, a prolific PIL petitioner, for his “scurrilous” remarks against minority communities in a petition against “illegal” religious conversions and his alleged track record of filing and withdrawing petitions “on his own fancy”.
“It appears PIL petitioners do not adhere to the rule of pleadings, locus standi… You cannot continuously file and withdraw petitions on your own fancy,” Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud addressed Mr. Upadhyay, represented by senior advocates Arvind Datar and Gaurav Bhatia.
Senior advocate P. Wilson, for Tamil Nadu, argued that Mr. Upadhyay had withdrawn a similar petition citing rampant illegal conversions in the country after the apex court had refused to entertain it in 2021. He had filed and withdrawn in the Delhi High Court twice.
“We will take all this into account, Mr. Wilson,” Chief Justice Chandrachud responded.
Mr. Bhatia submitted that similar allegations were made against Mr. Upadhyay in the previous hearing on January 9 before a Bench led by Justice MR Shah. That Bench had removed Mr. Upadhyay’s name as petitioner and re-named the case generically as ‘In re: On the issue of religious conversion’.
During the weekend, the case was unexpectedly shifted from Justice Shah’s court to the CJI’s Bench and listed for hearing on Monday.
During the hearing, senior advocate Dushyant Dave drew the Chief Justice Bench’s attention to the “vexatious and disparaging remarks” made in Mr. Upadhyay’s petition against Muslims and Christians.
Mr. Wilson said it was “plain targeting of some communities”.
“If this petition is entertained by the Supreme Court, it will present a terrible image,” Mr. Dave said.
The court asked Mr. Datar to formally delete the offending portions in the petition.
The three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Chandrachud said it would examine anti-conversion enactments of nine States, including Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka.
NGOs and private individuals who had moved the High Courts against these States laws can seek their transfer to the apex court. The Bench said it would consider the question of transferring the cases to the apex court even as Attorney General R. Venkataramani suggested that they should continue to be heard in the respective State High Courts.
The apex court is also considering appeals filed by Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh governments against the stay orders of their respective State High Courts of certain provisions in their anti-conversion statutes. These two laws primarily require a person desirous of changing faith to take prior consent of the local governmental authorities.
