NEW DELHI, Dec 16 — Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Chander Mohan has lost his job after riding into a storm of controversy over his decision to convert to Islam to marry again. His new bride, a former civil servant in the state who also lost her job, had also converted to Islam.

The long-married Congress leader, who has two children by his first wife, had gone missing and resurfaced only last week as Chand Mohammad, while his new wife, lawyer Anuradha Bali, adopted the name Fiza.

It was alleged that both had converted to circumvent the laws for bigamy. Hindu men, and even women, usually resort to conversion for remarriage to try and get away from messy divorces and to evade the charge of bigamy, an offence under the Hindu Marriage Act. Both Hindus and Muslims have frowned at such religious “conversions of convenience”.

Imam Habibur Rahman Sani, an influential cleric of neighbouring Punjab state, condemned Mohan's marriage as a “fraud” and called for his arrest.

Islamic scholar and Law Commission member Tahir Mahmood said: “If a married Hindu during the subsistence of his first marriage embraces Islam and marries again, it is illegal and punishable under the law, even if the conversion is absolutely genuine.

“Even born-Muslims are not allowed such reckless prodigality by their religion and its law.”

The Supreme Court, in a judgment in 1995 in a slew of such cases, also frowned on the practice, observing that the freedom to practise religion, guaranteed under the Constitution, is a freedom that does not encroach upon the rights of another.

The court dismissed the argument that making a Hindu, who converts to Islam and solemnises a second marriage, liable for bigamy is against Islam.

What made Mohan's case grab the headlines was the fact that he is the son of veteran politician and former Haryana strongman Bhajan Lal.

Lal was expelled from the ruling Congress party recently along with another of his sons, Member of Parliament Kuldip Bishnoi, for launching a regional party. He started the party after he was denied the chief ministership of the state.

Mohan, alias Mohammad, 43, however chose to remain with the Congress, declaring that he was a party “loyalist”. His decision was said to have created discord in his family. He was said to have disappeared soon after the Deepavali festival on Oct 28.

Reports said even Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was ignorant about his deputy's whereabouts.

Mohan's staff claimed that he had gone to Jammu and Kashmir to campaign for the Congress party in the ongoing elections to the state assembly, but the Haryana unit of the party denied the claims.

As the mystery over his disappearance deepened, Mohan suddenly resurfaced in Jaipur, capital of neighbouring Rajasthan state, accompanied by his new wife.

The Haryana government promptly sacked him.

But the love-struck Mohan appeared unruffled by the sacking. “Positions just come and go. I am a man of commitment and am very much part of the Congress party. It's for the high command to decide what role is to be assigned to me,” he told a news conference in the state capital, Chandigarh.

“People will accept my love. Don't they in the movies? Reel and real (life) are no different,” he said.

Bali, alias Fiza, 35, a divorcee, was the assistant advocate-general of Haryana. She, too, had been sacked from her job days before Mohan was thrown out of the state Cabinet.

She had known Mohan for the past five years. She said: “It was a big decision for him. His political career is at stake. Such things happen only in the movies. It is very tough to do this in real life.” — The Straits Times