Keeping the COVID-19 pandemic and the Government’s guidelines for its containment in mind, district leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) symbolically staged a demonstration against the anti-conversion Bill outside the district administrative complex in Kalaburagi on Monday.
CPI(M) district secretary K. Neela and members M.B. Sajjan, Sudhama Dhanni, Nagayyaswamy, and others raised slogans against the Government for introducing the Bill and demanded for its withdrawal.
“The Bill in question is introduced with a malicious intention of dividing the working communities along communal lines and giving a legal justification to moral policing being carried out by communal forces. We too oppose any efforts of forcible conversions and reconversions. But the present Bill makes government permission mandatory to opt for a willful choice of faith. It is a violation of one’s right to choose a faith of one’s like guaranteed by the Constitution. It also encourages right-wing forces to unleash attacks on the people and religious institutions in the name of stopping conversions,” Ms. Neela said.
The leaders later submitted a memorandum, addressed to the Chief Minister, to the office of Deputy Commissioner demanding immediate withdrawal of the Bill.
