India’s Supreme Court has set the stage for a landmark constitutional review of anti-conversion laws across 12 states, as Christian bodies mount parallel legal challenges to legislation they say has been systematically weaponized against religious minorities.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi on Feb. 2 issued notices to the central government and 12 state governments on a petition filed by the National Council of Churches (NCCI) in India, marking the latest and most sweeping development in a legal battle that has been building since 2020.
The NCCI, representing approximately 14 million Christians through its network of 32 member churches, 17 regional councils, 18 national organizations and seven allied agencies, argues that these laws have been systematically weaponized to target religious minorities through false complaints, arbitrary arrests and vigilante violence.
The court directed the central and state governments to file a common counter affidavit within four weeks and ordered that the matter be placed before a three-judge bench, recognizing the constitutional importance of the issues at stake. The NCCI petition targets specific provisions and amendments in laws across Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Rajasthan states.
Laws Rooted in ‘Malice’
Senior attorney Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the NCCI, told the court that the state laws incentivize vigilante groups through reward systems.
“The Acts which are in challenge, they are structured in such a manner that it incentivizes certain vigilante groups to take action, because there are rewards out there,” she argued. “So even if there is really no case at all, someone will make a case, somebody will be arrested, etc., because there is a reward for those on the vigilante side.”
The petitioner has sought an immediate stay on the operation of these laws, citing rampant abuse and harassment of minorities through complaints filed by unrelated third parties without procedural safeguards.
The Rev. Asir Ebenezer, general secretary of the NCCI, said the petition was driven by widespread atrocities against vulnerable Christian communities across India and by what he described as a persistent false narrative that everything Christians do is motivated by an ulterior intent to convert. He told Christian Daily International the laws run contrary to fundamental human rights and constitutional guarantees, and that the NCCI had a clear duty to protect the interests of Christian communities in the country.
John Dayal, spokesperson for the All India Catholic Union and a veteran journalist and human rights activist, was more direct.
“These laws were never about preventing coercion or fraud, which are anyway crimes in national law,” Dayal told Christian Daily International. “From the very first law to the most recent one, they are rooted in malice and an intent to entrap the church and criminalize evangelization.”
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the central government, opposed the petition and said the government’s response was ready and would be filed shortly. He contended that the submissions made by the petitioner were not “factually correct” and that the challenge was already covered under a five-judge Constitution Bench judgment from 1977.
In the landmark case of the Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Supreme Court had upheld state laws restricting conversion by force, fraud or allurement, holding that the right to “propagate” religion under Article 25 of the Constitution did not include “the right to convert another person to one’s own religion, but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenets.”
The NCCI’s Ebenezer maintained that the petition is not intended to challenge the principle behind the 1977 judgment but rather the far more expansive and punitive laws that have since been enacted. With each new law, he said, the scope of state interference in personal religious choice has widened, and no single precedent can be stretched to cover that expansion.
A Decade of Legal Resistance
The NCCI petition joins a broader legal challenge that has been building in the Supreme Court since 2020, when Citizens for Justice and Peace filed the lead petition questioning the constitutional validity of anti-conversion laws enacted by several states.
The modern wave of these laws began around 2018, with Uttarakhand enacting legislation that year, followed by Uttar Pradesh in 2020. Both laws targeted “unlawful conversion” including “for the purpose of marriage,” introducing declaration requirements and criminal penalties that critics say have been used to police interfaith relationships. Other states followed, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka, with the laws expanding rapidly as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consolidated power at both central and state levels.
The Supreme Court in September sought responses from nine states on petitions seeking stays on their respective anti-conversion laws, signaling its intent to address the constitutional questions comprehensively. The court appointed lead attorneys for both petitioners and respondents to facilitate preparation of case materials.
In December the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India filed a separate petition specifically challenging the Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act, 2025. The Rajasthan law, passed in September and enacted in October, has been described by petitioners as among the most draconian, with provisions allowing property demolition and confiscation without judicial oversight and penalties extending up to 20-years imprisonment for conversions involving minors, women or members of Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
Dayal, who in November co-filed a separate petition with attorney M. Huzaifa challenging the Rajasthan law’s sweeping property seizure provisions, said the law “institutionalizes collective punishment” where “an entire family loses their home based on allegations against one member.”
Constitutional Questions
The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), which has independently challenged anti-conversion laws in the high courts of Jharkhand, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh over the past decade, also weighed in on the broader constitutional battle.
The Rev. Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of EFI, said that for over a decade, the EFI has been at the forefront of challenging these laws in courts across the country.
“What we are witnessing today is a widening encroachment on the freedom of conscience that our constitution guarantees,” Lal told Christian Daily International. “These laws do not just target Christians. They threaten every citizen’s right to follow the faith of their choice.”
The petition challenges the anti-conversion laws on multiple grounds, arguing they are discriminatory, arbitrary and vaguely worded. The NCCI contends that these laws proceed on an unconstitutional presumption that religious conversions involving adults are inherently coerced or fraudulent.
By mandating prior intimation, inquiry and permission from district magistrates, the laws compel people to justify deeply personal decisions to the state, thereby violating rights to liberty, privacy and freedom of religion guaranteed under Articles 14, 21 and 25 of the Constitution.
The statutory definitions of “conversion,” “allurement,” “inducement” and “undue influence” are challenged as vague and overbroad, lacking objective standards. This vagueness, the petition argues, grants arbitrary discretion to authorities, enables discriminatory enforcement and produces a chilling effect on free speech and religious propagation.
The petition further argues that the laws undermine core principles of criminal jurisprudence by imposing a reverse burden of proof on the accused, eroding the presumption of innocence. Certain provisions singling out women as inherently vulnerable to unlawful conversion rest on gendered and paternalistic assumptions that deny women equal decisional autonomy.
Violence and Persecution
The legal challenges come against a backdrop of intensified violence and intimidation targeting Christians.
Reports from monitoring groups indicate 2025 saw record levels of anti-Christian incidents, with hundreds of documented cases of assaults, church disruptions, threats and vandalism, marking the fifth consecutive year of escalation.
During the Christmas season alone, multiple states reported attacks. Mobs vandalized decorations in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur mall, disrupted events in Madhya Pradesh, intimidated carol singers in Delhi and Kerala, and harassed Christians in Uttar Pradesh.
In August, a mob of around 70 suspected Bajrang Dal affiliates ambushed two Catholic priests, a catechist and two nuns in Odisha’s Jaleswar area as they returned from a village Mass, beating the men and damaging property. Earlier that month, two Kerala-based nuns and a tribal Christian were arrested in Chhattisgarh on allegations of forced conversion, claims the accompanying tribal women denied.
Open Doors ranked India 12th on its 2026 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution, a dramatic decline from 31st place in 2013. Christians comprise just 2.3 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people.
Constitutional Pivot
The core constitutional question before the court is not whether states can prohibit conversions by force or fraud, which was largely settled in the 1977 Stainislaus judgment, but whether modern anti-conversion laws have crossed into what petitioners describe as a regime of permission, suspicion and criminal process around voluntary religious choice and interfaith relationships.
The Supreme Court, in the 2018 case of Shafin Jahan, had held that “the choices of faith and belief, as indeed choices in matters of marriage, lie within an area where individual autonomy is supreme.” Petitioners have relied on this precedent to argue that anti-conversion laws, by imposing procedural barriers and criminal penalties, infringe upon individual autonomy in matters of faith.
The court had already signaled its concerns in May, when it orally observed that the Uttar Pradesh anti-conversion law “in some parts may seem to be violative of the fundamental right to religion guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution.” Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, vice president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, said at the time that the observation “highlights the primacy of the fundamental right of freedom of conscience” and gave the church “great hope.”
Article 25(1) of the Constitution states that “subject to public order, morality and health, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion.”
The matter is expected to come up for substantive hearing once the states and the central government file their responses. The outcome is likely to have far-reaching implications for religious freedom, minority rights and the constitutional balance between state authority and individual liberty across India.
John Dayal, who has spent over four decades documenting the erosion of minority rights in India, framed the stakes simply.
“The Supreme Court now has a chance to end this fraud on the constitution and affirm that faith is a matter of personal choice, not of state control,” he said.
