Will This Judgement Help with Harassment?
While Justice Chaudhary has done everything in his power to ensure that the order is actually enforced on the ground, with directions to the UP Chief Secretary to distribute it to all the state’s marriage officers, we should not imagine that this will end the scourge of harassment for inter-faith couples seeking to get married under the SMA.
There have been widespread reports in the past about how marriage officers and people in the local government offices where SMA marriages have to be registered, themselves inform right-wing groups about couples seeking to get married using the law, who then go on to harass the couples.
This same network is also being used to target people using the new UP ordinance as well, as reported by Ananya Bhardwaj for The Print.
It should also be noted that the new ordinance is acting as an enabler for harassment of inter-faith couples without any regard for the actual terms and provisions of the law itself. It has…