Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal posting on social media about the meeting of retired judges organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad earlier this month was a mistake, the Hindutva group’s president Alok Kumar has said, reported Bar and Bench on Monday.

On September 8, thirty retired Supreme Court and High Court judges took part in a meeting conducted by the organisation’s legal cell. Meghwal was also at the meeting.

The minister had shared images from the meeting on X and said that he took part in detailed conversations about “topics related to the legal reforms needed to create a developed India”.

Kumar told Bar and Bench that the meeting was a private gathering focused on discussing issues related to the betterment of India.

“Only and only former retired judges attended the event,” Bar and Bench quoted Kumar as saying. “It was closed-door event. Law minister [Meghwal] making picture public was a mistake.”

Soon after the meeting, Kumar had said that the topics that came up for discussion included “the collective issues before the society – such as the Waqf Amendment Bill, handing back of temples, handing over of temples under government control, conversions etc”.

Discussions “on nationalism and Hindutva” and laws affecting Hindus and cow slaughter were among the other subjects that came up, the organisation’s spokesperson Vinod Bansal had said.

In recent years, courts across the country have dealt with several cases that have been deeply relevant to the ideological demands of Hindutva groups.

As a Scroll analysis showed in May 2022, judicial orders have played a key role in advancing Hindutva claims on mosques such as the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. Vishwa Hindu Parishad members have been among the litigants in several such cases.

On February 27, retired judge Ajaya Krishna Vishvesha was appointed as the Lokpal of a public university in Lucknow, nearly a month after he allowed Hindus to offer prayers in the sealed basement of the Gyanvapi mosque complex. This has led to concerns on social media about the independence of the judiciary.

Court orders have also been key to allowing the use of anti-conversion laws in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states that have faced criticism from activists and legal experts for curbing the freedom of religion.

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