The Karnataka High Court will on Monday hear a petition filed challenging the communication issued by the State government dated July 7, seeking to collect information about churches in the state.

A division bench of Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi and Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum directed the counsel for petitioner People’s Union For Civil Liberties to furnish the translation copy of Annexures-A to C of the petition and posted the matter for further hearing on October 25.

The petition states that the letter issued by the Directorate of Minorities is devoid of reasons, amounting to discrimination and being violative of the right to privacy of a large section of the population in the state, guaranteed in the Constitution of India. “The survey intends to collect data related to the churches’ location, by noting down the name of the district, taluk and vidhan sabha constituency. Name of the institute and address, khata number, survey number and finally the details of the pastor/father of the church.”

The impugned letter does not explain the purpose of collecting information about churches. Neither does it explain why such information relating to only churches is being collected to the exclusion of other communities or even other minorities.

“The vagueness of the impugned letter has escalated the level of anxiety amongst the Christian community as they are being targeted and subjected to threats, abused and harassed by fundamentalist forces,” it says.

The plea also says that the Karnataka Minorities Commission Act, 1994 contains no provisions that empower the Commission, let alone any other state apparatus or instrumentality to collect or maintain data about churches in Karnataka, in the manner that has been attempted by the respondents.

The plea pray’s for directions to declare that communication dated July 7 and July 9 as illegal, void and unconstitutional. The plea also seeks to protect and safeguard all the information/data already collected pursuant to the impugned communications in accordance with the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy case and principles enshrined in the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019.