Bengaluru: As the state government is pursuing an anti-conversion law in Karnataka, the state BJP said that such a move is necessary, as it is evident from the rise of the Christian population. The party added that due to forceful conversions, the community's numbers increased from 0.5 per cent to 3 per cent, NDTV reported.
A senior state BJP leader, Vaman Acharya, said that all conversions as far as BJP are concerned are illegal. He claimed that the statistics were based on the last census in 2011, but NDTV found that the census data recorded the Christian population in Karnataka as 1.87 per cent, a drop from 1.91 per cent in 2001.
The state BJP's official spokesperson, Dr Giridhar Upadhayay, mentioned no evidence of the alleged Christian population rise. But, he said that the government had ordered a survey on churches - registered, unregistered and illegal. Many houses have been converted to prayer halls, and people are being lured into it while fear was brought into their minds, he said.
Meanwhile, the opposition alleged that the anti-conversion bill is a gimmick for political gain, and attacks on the minority community are increasing. The Karnataka Congress head DK Shivakumar said that if the issue is severe, let it be brought into the Parliament.
Since September, when the state government started mooting the anti-conversion bill, many incidents of violence were reported from the state, including the burning of Christian religious books, barging into churches and assaulting churchgoers, etc.
Despite these attacks along with objections surging against the anti-conversion bill, the Basavaraj Bommai government is going ahead with the bill saying illegal conversions are on the rise. The CM announced that the bill would be tabled in the winter session of the state assembly.
The Bengaluru city is seeing an increase in protests against the bill while the people's union of civil liberties released a report on Tuesday that stated around 39 incidents of hate crimes by Hindutva groups. Out of them, a minimum of seven happened after September.
Former Karnataka Police chief ST Ramesh told NDTV that the police in the state is breaching laws of the land and constitution. They will only work at the political dispensation. The recent wave of violence against the Christian community has the state government's support since the police are not registering suo moto cases or investigating impartially, he said.