The formation of yet another cabinet committee to resolve the problem of unilateral conversion of minors is an exercise in futility, said DAP national vice-chair M Kulasegaran.

The lawyer for M Indira Gandhi, the kindergarten teachers caught in a legal tussle over her children’s unilateral conversion to Islam by her estranged husband, Kulasegaran told a DAP-organised gathering in Karak today that an informal committee composed of three ministers was formed after the cabinet deliberated on the issue as its meeting on Wednesday.

“This committee will be toothless like the ones that were formed in 2009 and 2013 when the issue of unilateral conversion of minors flared up,” predicted the MP for Ipoh Barat.

Kulasegaran said the recent Court of Appeal’s ruling that only the Shariah court could determine whether Indira’s children conversion to Islam was valid has provoked intense debate and controversy.

“The cabinet has taken note of the controversy and has formed a committee composed of three ministers to resolve the matter but I’m afraid that nothing will come of it,” he said.

It is understood the committee is composed of Tourism Minister Mohd. Nazri Aziz, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Jamil Khir Baharom, and Health Minister S Subramaniam.

“I doubt there is a political will to resolve the matter because in 2009 and 2013, similar panels were formed but the issue was consigned to a backburner rather than resolved because there is no political will to solve it,” he commented.

He said that in spite of a cabinet advisory to the 2009 committee that offspring of a marriage in which a spouse converts to another religion should continue to be brought up in the religion of their parents at marriage, the cabinet panel was unable to come up with a resolution.

Ditto, the cabinet panel formed in 2013.

“I think that unless the prime minister himself heads the panel, its deliberations would amount to nothing because its predecessors were similarly devoid of will and teeth,” asserted Kulasegaran.

He said the issue of unilateral conversions had arrived at a stage where significant sectors of the public know that something has to be done about it but sections of the religious bureaucracy were opposed to a resolution if it did not suit a supremacist version of their religion.