Uttarakhand has been battling its worst floods in a century. Tuesday morning saw its capital city, Dehradun, being battered by a cloudburst that has left over 18 dead and several missing. It has destroyed key roads and bridges, including the crucial link road to Mussorie, Maldevta, and Rishikesh, and floodwater and debris have subsumed several homes and business complexes. On Thursday morning, the district of Uttarkashi was hit by yet another cloudburst, destroying key assets in Chamoli.
Dharali, Harsil, and Tharali are just a few townships that stand destroyed. Its rivers are in spate, and electricity and water connections stand destroyed across this hill state. With roads destroyed, provisions are running low in several towns. Flooding of rivers is especially ominous because in Dehradun, to cite one example, 70 per cent of its residents have built illegal homes on these riverbeds.
One would imagine Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has his hands full, given that his state stands bruised by a string of deadly calamities during the last few months. But right in the middle of this devastation and misery, Dhami announces a string of legislations, which were completely uncalled for. The timing is so inappropriate as to make a mockery of these two amendments.
The first relates to making the anti-conversion law more stringent. The Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act was introduced in 2018 and then amended in 2022 to make the punishments more stringent. Forceful conversion was made a cognisable and non-bailable offence with a jail term of five years and a fine of Rs 50,000.
On August 13, 2025, this law was made even more stringent. Initially, forced religious conversion resulted in a punishment of ten years. Now that has been increased to life imprisonment. Other clauses in this fresh amendment state that any attempt to convert a person into another religion with the lure of jobs, money, or other “gifts” would be considered forced conversion and would attract a punishment from seven to 14 years. A “false promise of marriage” or hiding one’s religion with the intention of marriage could attract imprisonment from three to 10 years and a fine of Rs 3 lakh.
The most frightening aspect of this fresh amendment is that an accused person can be arrested without a warrant, and bail would be granted only if the court was convinced that the accused was not guilty and would not commit such a crime again.
The question to ask is just how many people have been booked under this anti-conversion law since 2018? The answer is not even a handful.
In 2022, the police registered two separate cases against four people under the Act. In one case, a man and his two accomplices were booked for converting a 26-year-old woman and her two minor sons to Hinduism and then forcing her to marry a Hindu man in Dehradun. In another case, an unidentified person was booked for influencing a Hindu man on an online platform to convert to Islam. The person has not been identified to date.
Given the paucity of such cases, what was the need to bring yet another amendment to this already strict law, and that too right in the middle of an ongoing calamity?
The other amendment has only served to prove once again that our hill state is nothing short of a police state. The Uniform Civil Code Amendment 2025 has been introduced to ensure even tougher penalties for those who wish to enter into live-in relationships. Now, a married person entering into such a relationship could face up to seven years in jail and a fine. The law also makes live-in arrangements through force, coercion or fraud punishable with the sentence going up to eleven years. Shockingly, the registrar general has been given the power to annul registrations dealing with live-in relationships, marriage, divorce and inheritance.
With all aspects of our lives being swept under the Hindutva embrace, it is not surprising that all minority institutions, whether run by Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Parsis or Buddhists, have been ordered to seek affiliation with the state education board for minority recognition through a new state authority or else face closure.
This move is surprising, given that all these schools have been operating with distinction for more than a century. The reason for such a move is to ensure that these institutions follow the Uttarakhand School Board curriculum rather than enjoy the choice of adopting the CBSE, the International Baccalaureate or the ICSE offered syllabi.
Dhami is involved in pushing this Hindutva agenda in an attempt to hide his obvious administrative failures. We now have a situation where the Hindutva agenda is being implemented not only through Parliament but at an even faster pace through state legislatures.
The opposition parties see these amendments as part of a recurring pattern. Just months ago, the Dhami government carried out a renaming drive. Ten of the places, which have undergone a name change, are in the Haridwar district, two in Nainital and one in Udham Singh Nagar.
Officials said the changes were about restoring cultural heritage, but the Opposition believes this move is aimed at further polarising voters by targeting names linked with Islamic history and is one more attempt to distract people from corruption allegations against the government.
Dhami is continuing with his communal agenda of converting Uttarakhand into a Hindutva laboratory. He sees these moves as helping him consolidate his vote base, which is why he has little interest in introducing reforms which will help eliminate poverty or improve the dismal state of education in this state.
But the environmental disasters the state has been reeling under in the last five months have made mincemeat of this malicious propaganda. No amount of flood relief is going to bring back the lives of the hundreds who have died in these five months. This devastation has also critically affected agriculture and tourism, given the large-scale destruction of hotels, guest houses and infrastructure.
But there has been no learning curve with this government. If the government continues with its present model of `development’, it seems unlikely that we will be able to ride over this present calamity. The Dhami government has now proposed a massive elevated corridor in Dehradun on the riverbeds of the Rispana and Bindal rivers in an effort to decongest traffic at a cost of Rs 6200 crore. Both these rivers are, at present, flowing in full fury, and further construction on their beds will only worsen the impact of floods, with the possibility of bringing down this corridor in the days to come. Scientific mitigation measures are the need of the hour. Not more and more construction.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.
