The Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, 2026, popularly called the State’s anti-conversion law, has come into force after Presidential assent and a Home Department notification fixing August 28, 2026 as the commencement date. A coalition of civil society organisations, women’s groups and religious bodies has opposed the law and asked the government to withdraw the notification or keep implementation on hold.
The Act was passed by the Legislative Assembly on March 16, 2026 and by the Legislative Council the next day. The ruling Mahayuti backed it. Shiv Sena (UBT) supported it; Congress, NCP (SP) and the Samajwadi Party opposed it. President Droupadi Murmu assented; the law was gazette-notified on July 30-31, 2026.
The statute’s stated object is “protection of the right to freedom of religion and prohibition of unlawful conversion from one religion to another.” It does not ban a change of faith by free consent. It prohibits conversion obtained by force, coercion, threat, fraud, misrepresentation, undue influence, allurement, or a promise of marriage, and it creates a notice-and-declaration procedure for conversions that are claimed to be voluntary.
Which organisations are opposing the law?
Twenty organisations identified as the Joint Civil Society coalition are:
1. The Bombay Catholic Sabha
2. Mumbai For Peace
3. Palghar Zilla Masiha Sangati (PZMS)
4. Christian Development Association
5. People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL)
6. Maharashtra Stree Mukti Parishad
7. Hasrat-e-Zindagi Mamuli
8. Synod of Pentecostal Churches
9. Citizens for the Constitution
10. Zylo Foundation
11. Rahat Legal Aid Foundation
12. Fridays for Future Mumbai
13. United Christians of Mumbai
14. Forum Against Oppression of Women
15. Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR)
16. Maharashtra Minority Christian Development Council
17. Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS)
18. Central Mumbai Christian Fellowship
19. Christian Reform United People Association
20. Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO)
Several of the same names appeared in a March 2026 joint statement against the then Bill. At a August 24, press conference at Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh, speakers included advocate Irfan Engineer, advocate Lara Jesani, Tushar Gandhi, retired Justice Abhay Thipsay, Father Frazer Mascarenhas and Sandhya Gokhale. PUCL, APCR and the Forum Against Oppression of Women have said they are preparing a Supreme Court challenge. Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind has separately opposed the Act.
What the coalition is arguing
The groups say prior notice, public posting of proposed conversions, objections, police inquiry and post-conversion declarations put faith, marriage and personal choice under State scrutiny. They object to third-party complaints by parents, siblings and other relatives; to the reversal of the burden of proof onto the person who caused or abetted the conversion; to cognisable and non-bailable offences; and to a wide definition of “allurement,” which in related reporting has been described as covering gifts, jobs, free education, a “better lifestyle,” divine healing, and portraying one religion unfavourably against another.
They argue the law will hit women, young adults, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities, and can be used against interfaith couples and churches. Some Mumbai-region churches have begun collecting self-declaration forms from worshippers stating that they attend of their own free will. The Western Region Bishops’ Council and the Archdiocese of Bombay had earlier criticised the 60-day notice and the burden-of-proof clause. The coalition wants implementation stayed until the Supreme Court decides pending challenges to similar laws in other States, and says existing IPC/BNS provisions already cover force, fraud and intimidation.
Those objections describe how the statute is drafted. They do not establish that the Act outlaws conscience, bans voluntary conversion, or was enacted without a stated public-order purpose. The text and the government’s own objects clause say the opposite.
What the Act actually does
Under Section 6, a person who intends to convert, and any person or institution that intends to organise a conversion ceremony, must give 60 days’ prior notice to the competent authority. The authority is to display the notice and call for objections within 30 days. After conversion, a declaration must be filed (the Act text provides 21 days). A conversion that skips the prescribed process can be treated as void.
Section 3 prohibits converting, attempting to convert, or aiding conversion by the listed unlawful means. Relatives may complain; police must register such complaints and may also act suo motu. Investigation is to be by an officer not below Sub-Inspector rank. Offences are cognisable and non-bailable and are to be tried by a Sessions Court. Section 13 places the burden of proving that a conversion was not in contravention of the Act on the person who caused it and on the abettor.
Penalties reported from the Bill/Act: up to seven years and fine for a first unlawful conversion; up to ten years and a higher fine for a repeat offence; enhanced punishment where the person converted is a minor, a woman, a person of unsound mind, or a member of the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes; and separate treatment of mass conversion. A marriage solemnised solely for unlawful conversion can be declared void. A child born of such a marriage or relationship is deemed to belong to the mother’s religion as it stood before that marriage or relationship.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has repeatedly said the law does not prohibit voluntary conversion or interfaith marriage as such. Minister of State for Home Pankaj Bhoyar has said the 60-day notice is meant to show that a conversion is by free will and not by fraud, force or inducement. Maharashtra is the 13th State with a law of this family.
Why the State enacted the law
The official Statement of Objects and Reasons is the primary document, not the coalition press note.
It records that the right under Article 25 is not absolute. It is subject to public order, morality, health and the other provisions of Part III. It cites Supreme Court law that the right to propagate does not include a right to forcibly convert another person.
It states that conversions that are forceful, involuntary, or obtained by influencing free consent “have been increasing and are being carried out in an organised manner by various institutions,” that such instances disturb public order and social harmony, and that “existing laws are not sufficient.”
A special committee headed by the Director General of Police studied other States’ statutes and recommended a Maharashtra Act. The Bill’s own salient features begin with a prohibition on conversion by allurement, misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion or other fraudulent means.
That is the same line Fadnavis used on the floor: the law is aimed at coercion, fraud, inducement and deception, not at a particular religion and not at a genuine change of belief. Nitish Rane, when the Cabinet cleared the draft, linked it to a manifesto promise of a strong anti-conversion law, including what the party has called “love jihad.”
Enhanced penalties for women, minors and SC/ST persons are written as a vulnerability shield, not as a ban on those groups changing faith. Fadnavis later called the commencement a protection measure for women against exploitation.
The constitutional baseline is Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1977). The Supreme Court held that Article 25’s word “propagate” means the right to transmit or spread the tenets of one’s religion by exposition, not a fundamental right to convert another person.
A purposeful project of converting others, the Court said, would collide with the other person’s freedom of conscience. Anti-conversion statutes of Madhya Pradesh and Odisha were upheld. Maharashtra’s objects clause expressly rests on that distinction.
The government did not invent the factual predicate out of a vacuum.
In July 2025, BJP MLAs raised “forcible conversions to Christianity” in the tribal belt of Dhule and Nandurbar, including claims of inducement through medical aid and of large numbers of unauthorised churches (one RTI figure cited in the House was 199 in Navapur taluka). The revenue minister told the Assembly a strong conversion law was coming; a committee was to examine illegal churches. Tribal welfare remarks in the same debate spoke of converted Adivasis and the loss of community status. Those are legislative facts on the record, whether or not every church named is later proved illegal.
In 2026 the Nashik TCS/BPO matter became a high-visibility illustration of the pattern the government says the Act is meant to reach: workplace hierarchy plus religious pressure. Multiple women employees alleged conversion pressure; a Hindu employee alleged forced namaz and other humiliation; police registered several FIRs; team leaders were arrested. Fadnavis later said investigation showed attempts at forced conversion, distinguished ordinary interfaith marriage from a pattern of targeting women, and used the phrase “love jihad” for that pattern. Those remain police-and-government allegations pending trial, but they are not an invented category.
Other reported Maharashtra files over the last decade have involved alleged evangelical inducement in villages, an Amravati prayer-meeting FIR in which the complainant said conversion was linked to job and money, a Pune SC man’s complaint of a forced-conversion attempt, and marriage-linked conversion disputes. Not every FIR is a conviction.
The coalition’s fallback argument, that “ordinary criminal law is enough,” is the argument the objects clause rejects. Force and fraud are already offences. What ordinary penal law does not do is create a transparent, time-bound record that a conversion was by free will; invite objections before a ceremony is staged; let specified relatives trigger an inquiry when a minor or dependent is involved; void a marriage used only as a conversion device; or put the evidential burden on the organiser who claims the conversion was clean. Those are the gaps the legislature chose to close.
Why the “ban on conscience” claim does not match the statute
The campaign line is that notice, inquiry and burden of proof equal State ownership of the soul. That is a slogan, not a reading of Section 3 read with Section 6.
1. A person who changes religion by free consent is not the target. The target is the person who causes conversion by prohibited means.
2. Notice is an administrative check on organised conversion, the exact activity the objects clause calls institutional and rising. Public posting is how a family learns that a dependent is being taken through a ceremony, which is the point of the relative-complaint clause.
3. Burden of proof in Section 13 follows the person who conducted or abetted the conversion. That is how other special statutes treat the party with exclusive knowledge of inducement, money, sermons and private meetings. It is harsh. It is not unique, and it is not a ban on belief.
4. “Allurement” is written widely because inducement in conversion work is rarely a gun; it is school fees, clinic access, a job, a visa story, a healing claim, or a marriage promise. Father Mascarenhas asked whether education or healing can be called inducement. The legislative answer is: yes, when they are the price of a change of religion. Charity that is not tied to conversion is not the offence. Charity that is the hook is.
5. Interfaith marriage between two consenting adults is not, on the government’s stated position, an offence. What the Act hits is conversion obtained by a marriage promise, concealment of religion, or a ceremony used to lock in a conversion that would not otherwise occur. Calling that “surveillance of love” erases the distinction the CM drew on the record.
6. Article 25 protects profession, practice and propagation. After Stainislaus, it does not protect a conversion industry. Treating every procedural restraint as persecution is how that industry talks about regulation.
The 20 organisations may go to court; they are not honest brokers. Several are churches, church networks and evangelising outfits with a direct interest in keeping conversion un-notified and hard to police. Their talk of “privacy” and “conscience” is a wrap-around resistance to notice, objections and a burden of proof on the converter.
Calling the Act a solution without a crime, or induced conversion a “falsehood,” is itself the falsehood, set against the objects clause, the DGP committee, the tribal-belt debate, Nashik and the first Pune FIRs.
