Mumbai: A panel constituted in 2022 by the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government to track interfaith marriages in the state, after Mumbai resident Shraddha Walkar was allegedly killed by her Muslim partner, is in limbo with no meetings held so far this year.
The committee is tasked with proactively keeping an eye on cases of interfaith marriages and addressing complaints received on its toll-free number. The committee is also expected to register first information reports (FIRs) based on complaints in which it finds merit, but, since the formation of the committee, not a single FIR has been filed.
“It has been about one year since any meetings were held, partly due to Lok Sabha election preparations and then the Model Code of Conduct. Now the administration is busy with other schemes,” said a person involved with the committee, on condition of anonymity.
Furthermore, according to information obtained by Samajwadi Party MLA from Bhiwandi, Rais Shaikh, through an RTI (Right To Information request), only three meetings had been held and only 402 complaints registered with it by members of different communities till December 2023 since the formation of the committee in 2022.
Parties in the Shinde government, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had made ‘love jihad‘ — accusing mainly Muslim men of entering into interfaith marriages or relationships to convert Hindu women to Islam — an issue in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. Hindu Jan Akrosh rallies organised by Right-wing organisations, such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), at the time, saw the participation of BJP leaders who raised ‘land jihad‘ (forcing people to sell off their lands) and ‘love jihad‘ as major issues.
On Saturday, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state government was considering a law to curb ‘love jihad‘, but will study similar legislation in other states before taking a decision.
The interfaith marriage-family coordination committee, set up by the State Women and Child Development Department, was understood to be a part of this agenda, though the government had denied any links to ‘love jihad‘.
The committee was formed in December 2022 under BJP’s Mangal Prabhat Lodha, then Women and Child Development minister. The department has changed hands since. After the Ajit Pawar-led National Congress Party (NCP) joined the BJP and the Shinde faction of Sena in government in July 2023, NCP MLA Aditi Tatkare was assigned the portfolio.
Tatkare did not respond to ThePrint’s requests for clarity on the status of the committee.
Political analyst Hemant Desai told ThePrint that this could be a deliberate move by the government to not antagonise the Muslim vote bank.
“BJP and few BJP leaders have been continuously taking up the so-called ‘love jihad’ matter. But looks like there are not too many cases on these lines. Plus, Ajit Pawar’s NCP has also consistently tried to keep up with its Muslim vote bank. So for them to pick up this issue is not favourable. Even BJP might have understood that the alliance needs non-Hindu votes as well in the upcoming elections and that is why I feel the committee is not really functional,” he said. Assembly elections are due in the state later this year.
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‘Implementation slow, but GO still in place’
The committee is tasked with obtaining detailed information on couples in intercaste or interfaith marriages — tracking registered marriages performed at places of worship and couples who eloped. It must also contact newly married women and find out if they are in touch with their families. If the committee finds the woman is estranged from her family, it would try to reconcile the two sides.
It has 13 members, including officials of the Women and Child Development Department and people from various fields like lawyers and activists.
The committee was set up after a resolution was passed in the Maharashtra Assembly to track interfaith marriages in December 2022 after the murder of Shraddha Walkar, a resident of Vasai, came to light. Walkar was killed in Delhi allegedly by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala, who police suspect chopped up her body to try and hide the murder.
Activists had, at the time, challenged the implementation of the government resolution because it was based on false assumptions of the real cause of intimate partner violence. They argued that it raised concerns over the right to privacy, state surveillance and executive overreach. Shaikh has also been demanding that the GR be quashed.
“Although the implementation is very slow, the GR still is very much in place and has not been yet revoked,” the above-mentioned source told ThePrint.
A committee in limbo
Shortly after the formation of the committee, the then Women and Child Development Department minister Lodha had told ThePrint, “There is no involvement of any ‘love jihad’ concept in this. It’s only to help those girls who have gone against the wishes of their original family. We want to protect them, we want them to communicate with their original family.”
“If nobody wants (another) Shraddha Walkar case…it is an eye-opener. We are doing the work that we are supposed to do as the women and child development department,” he added.
However, according to the RTI filed by MLA Shaikh and accessed by ThePrint, since its formation, the committee has met only thrice till December 2023. The first meeting was held on 20 January 2023; the second on 2 May 2023, and the third on 10 July 2023, according to the RTI.
In the first meeting, the committee held administrative discussions and emphasised spreading awareness about the law. In the second, a toll-free helpline number was decided and members were tasked to take this to a district level. And in the third, only 9 of the 13 members were present. They were asked to study similar laws in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, along with focusing on spreading awareness of the law, the RTI revealed.
Not a single meeting has been held this year so far.
While intimating Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s office regarding moving a privilege motion against Lodha, Shaikh, in his application dated 11 March 2023, said, “On 8th of March 2023, the then concern minister while speaking on the floor of the house had said that there were more than a lakh cases of love jihad were reported in the state.”
“However when we got to the roots of the same, we found out that there were only a few complaints which were reported. Hence it is a clear case that the minister deceived the entire house by giving false information. Despite many requests, the proper information was not shared despite me being a member of the state assembly,” Shaikh added.
He brought the attention of Narwekar and sitting Women and Child Development Minister Tatkare to the RTI data in a letter during the winter assembly session in 2023. “Only 402 complaints have been registered in one year and that too involve various communities not just two communities — Hindus and Muslims,” he told them. But did not receive a reply.
On Friday, Shaikh told ThePrint, “This is nothing but a bogus committee and there has not even been a single FIR till date. The committee should be scrapped.”
Along with Shaikh, last year, four citizens’ rights groups — Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP), People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Maharashtra, Forum Against the Oppression of Women (FAOW) and Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) — filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against this GR alleging that Articles 14, 15, 19, 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India had been violated.
The petition, which ThePrint has accessed, also included statistics that show that religion or faith is not the cause of violence experienced by women in intimate relationships.
The case is still pending.
“Though the very existence of the controversial GR on the Maharashtra government’s books, appointing a committee remains a constant threat to autonomy and freedoms of young persons who are free to choose partners of their choice, it appears from the proceedings in the high court that, since June 2023 — when the state government was scheduled to file a rejoinder — until now, no sittings or meetings of the controversial committee have taken place. Orally too this has been mentioned by the state before the High Court,” Teesta Setalvad, CJP secretary, the first petitioner, told ThePrint Monday.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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