Facing Pushback From Within, Goa Halts Plan for Anti-Conversion Bill
The Goa government has pulled back from introducing a stringent anti-conversion law in the state assembly after facing unexpected resistance from within its own camp. On Monday, 31 August 2026, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant decided not to table The Goa Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2026, during the three-day monsoon session that began the same morning. The bill had been cleared by the cabinet only last week and was listed for introduction on the opening day. It was removed from the assembly’s business list after a last-minute meeting with legislators, including BJP MLAs and an independent who supports the government.
The reversal is significant because it did not come from the opposition alone. It came from ruling-side lawmakers who said the government had moved too fast, without data and without taking the state’s social fabric into account.
A meeting that changed the day’s agenda
Sawant was scheduled to introduce the bill when the House convened. Instead, he met Catholic MLAs from the ruling side minutes before proceedings began. Those present included BJP MLA Michael Lobo of Calangute, BJP MLA Delilah Lobo, and Independent MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco of Curtorim, who backs the BJP-led government. At that meeting, the legislators opposed the legislation. After it ended, the bill was dropped from the day’s business.
Lobo did not mince words. He said the government had acted in haste by getting the cabinet to approve the bill. “The Bill will not be coming. We have to study the bill and take everyone into confidence. We need to know what the bill is all about. What is happening is wrong. Everyone’s religious beliefs are important, and there should be respect for all religions. Sooner or later, there needs to be a discussion on what’s good for Goa; things are moving in the wrong direction,” he said.
Lourenco was even more direct. He said he had already made it clear that he would oppose the bill if it was tabled. “There are no religious conversions happening in Goa, according to me. There is no data, there are no statistics. So, why is it required? Goa is a peaceful state, and people here have lived in harmony. So, why disturb this harmony? I have supported the government… but this doesn’t have my support,” he told reporters. He added that even in the few offences registered in the past, cases had not been charge-sheeted and had either been quashed by courts or closed. Minority organisations, he said, work with vulnerable people, and there is no evidence that this work has led to conversions. The idea of such a law for Goa, he said, was in “bad taste.”
Sawant himself has not issued a detailed public explanation of the climbdown. The practical outcome is clear: the bill will not be taken up in this session. Whether it returns later has not been stated.
What the bill would have done
The draft law, formally titled The Goa Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2026, sought to ban conversions carried out through force, coercion, undue influence, allurement, fraudulent means or marriage. It proposed imprisonment of up to life, a minimum fine of Rs 50,000, and compensation of up to Rs 5 lakh for victims.
Anyone intending to change religion would have had to file a declaration at least 60 days in advance with the district magistrate or additional district magistrate, stating that the conversion was voluntary and free of coercion. A marriage found to have been solemnised solely for unlawful conversion could be declared void.
Religious figures — priests, karmkandis, maulvis or mullas — involved in unlawful conversions could face three to 10 years in prison. Where the person converted was a minor, a woman, a person with disability or mental illness, or a member of the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, the punishment rose to rigorous imprisonment of five to 14 years and a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh.
Officials had framed the law as protection for “gullible persons” from conversion by misrepresentation or inducement. The cabinet note said the Constitution guarantees the right to profess, practise and propagate religion, but that this individual right should not be read as a collective right to proselytise.
Why the pushback was so sharp
Goa is not a typical Indian state on this question. Christians and Muslims together make up more than 35 per cent of the population. According to the 2011 census, Catholics were about 25 per cent of Goa’s then 1.5 million people and Muslims about 8–10 per cent, with Hindus forming the majority. The Catholic share has declined over decades from a much higher figure in the early twentieth century, a change driven by emigration, lower fertility and in-migration rather than any documented wave of forced conversions.
That demographic mix, and a long public culture of coexistence, is why many in the state treated the bill as more than a technical criminal statute. The Council for Social Justice and Peace of the Archdiocese of Goa and the Catholic Association of Goa issued a joint statement after the cabinet cleared the draft. They said Goa has long been distinguished by peaceful coexistence among faiths. The proposed law, they argued, “risks irreparably damaging that precious inheritance by replacing mutual trust with suspicion, and social harmony with surveillance and fear.”
The statement went further. It said the state must not use the prevention of coercion as a pretext for supervising personal belief, restricting interfaith relationships, or criminalising legitimate prayer, teaching, pastoral care and charitable service. “Goa must not import divisive legislation merely because similar laws have been enacted in BJP-governed states,” it said. The provisions, the Church bodies warned, would set neighbour against neighbour and create incentives for relatives, activists and vigilante groups to monitor private relationships and disrupt prayer meetings. A law presented as protecting harmony could become an instrument for destroying it.
Church leaders also pointed out that Catholic Canon Law already requires an adult seeking baptism to do so freely and after proper instruction. Forced or fraudulent conversion is already an offence under existing criminal law. Critics asked what new problem the bill was solving.
A thin evidence base
That question of evidence is at the centre of the dissent. Lourenco’s claim that there is no data on conversions in Goa has not been publicly rebutted with official statistics. In 2022, a Christian pastor was arrested twice in an alleged unlawful conversion case. A court later quashed both cases after the Goa Police admitted they had no evidence against him and his wife. Such episodes have fed the argument that existing law is enough and that a special statute would mainly invite misuse.
Sawant had signalled interest in such a law earlier. In July 2025 he told the assembly that Goa needed legislation similar to Uttar Pradesh’s and referred to so-called “love jihad,” a phrase used by right-wing groups for alleged conspiracies to convert Hindu women through marriage. Courts and the Union government do not officially recognise the term. Neighbouring Maharashtra recently became the twelfth state to notify an anti-conversion law. Supporters of the Goa bill saw the state as catching up. Opponents saw it as importing a national template into a place that does not have the same social conflict.
Civil rights groups have long argued that these laws violate freedom of religion and privacy and are often used to police interfaith marriages, especially those involving Hindu women. In Goa, that critique landed with extra force because the first line of resistance came from BJP and allied MLAs, not only from the Congress or regional parties.
Some commentators have also suggested the bill served as a distraction from other live disputes in the state, including land-use conversions and environmental protests. Whether or not that reading is fair, the political cost of pressing ahead this week was clearly judged too high.
What the halt does — and does not — settle
The government’s decision is a pause, not a public burial. The cabinet has already approved the draft. Nothing in Monday’s statements rules out a revised version in a later session after “study” and consultation, the language Lobo used. For the moment, though, the ruling camp has drawn a line: Goa will not be rushed into a law that a section of its own legislators say is unnecessary, poorly explained and socially risky.
The episode also says something about how power works in a small state. In a 40-member House, a handful of Catholic MLAs on the treasury benches can force a course correction that opposition speeches alone might not. Goa’s politics still runs through parish, village and community networks as much as through party commands from Delhi. That is why a bill framed in the language of national anti-conversion statutes ran into local resistance the moment it reached the assembly door.
For now, the monsoon session will proceed without the most contentious item on the original list. The larger argument — whether Goa needs a special law against unlawful conversion, who would police it, and what it would do to everyday interfaith life — has only been postponed. The government wanted a quick passage. Its own legislators demanded a slower look. On Monday, the slower look won.
About The Author
