Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma talks tough on love jihad, says will ban polygamy

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said that he wants peaceful co-existence between Hindus and Muslims in the state but love jihad should be stopped. He said issues like jihad and forceful religious conversions create tensions in society. The chief minister also said that his government will ban polygamy in the state.

In most cases of 'love jihad' it is seen that girls are forcibly taken away and then blackmailed with some videos taken of them, he said while speaking to reporters at Bongaigaon after a two-day convention of police superintendents of the state. 'Love jihad' is a term used by right-wing groups to allege a ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into religious conversion through marriage.

"We will have to see if girls are being forcibly converted to another religion and getting married under duress ... We have to bring such marriages under the scope of investigations," he said. "A qazi (Muslim cleric) cannot register a Hindu-Muslim marriage. Similarly, a Hindu priest too cannot do the same legally... If boys and girls from different religions want to marry they should do it under the Special Marriage Act and without converting," he said.

The Assam chief minister appealed to parents to guide their children so that a situation like 'love jihad' does not arise as there are cultural differences between Hindu-Muslim communities and girls from either of them find it difficult to adjust with people after an inter-faith marriage. He said ways to widen investigations into cases of 'love jihad' were discussed at the convention.

Sarma also asked the police to develop a standard operating procedure for probing cases of 'love-jihad', which is the root cause of forceful religious conversions in the state. He has been claiming that the triple murder case in Golaghat where a 25-year-old Muslim man killed his Hindu wife and her parents on Monday was a case of 'love jihad'.

The chief minister reiterated that the second round of crackdown on child marriages will be launched in September and the matter was discussed in detail at the convention. Incidents of child marriage have come down remarkably and in most of the districts it is negligible, but "Our goal is to make it zero", he said.

"We want to comprehensively ban both child marriage and polygamy in the state and to this end we will bring in a law that will allow the police to effectively deal with the menace...Banning polygamy is our commitment and we will do it," he said.

The chief minister said a four-member committee headed by Justice (Retd) Rumi Phukan was examining the legislative competence of the state legislature to enact a law to end polygamy in the state and is likely to submit the report within 15 days.

(With inputs from PTI)