When such a notice is seen, a visit to the girl's family follows. A photograph of the notice is carried along. The team, which includes a woman advocate and a retired policewoman, "counsels" the girl not to go ahead with the marriage. Prakash claims to have stopped 59 such inter-faith marriages since 2002.
Prakash is one of the hundreds of men and women across India working with the Sangh Parivar to "counter" conversions from Hinduism to Islam and Christianity. These endeavours encompass "neutralising" the phenomenon of the so-called "love jihad", promoting the "ghar wapasi" of Muslims and Christians willing to return to the "religion of their forefathers", and "convincing" Dalits and tribals against embracing another faith.
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They are backed by groups of "intellectuals" and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmakers pushing for a central law to ban religious conversions. Currently, there is no central anti-conversion law, though a handful of states have legislations banning conversions.
The "intellectuals" are trying to reach out to the educated middle-class. One such, a group of "women intellectuals", issued a signed statement on Thursday to highlight previous anti-conversion laws brought by Congress governments in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and how "Mahatma Gandhi reconverted his eldest son Harilal from Islam to Hinduism". The appeal signed by Indira Gandhi National Open University Pro Vice-Chancellor Sushma Yadava, lawyer Monika Arora and journalist Abha Khanna Gupta, among others, sought investigation into foreign aid received by Christian organisations and asked the government to enact an anti-conversion law to stop "unethical, illegal conversions, which are on account of allurement or force."
Prakash, a technical officer with the department of physics and astrophysics at Delhi University, concedes his group hasn't had much success in Delhi in motivating Muslims or Christians towards ghar wapasi, but says the main aim was to stop Dalits from changing their Hindu faith.
"We will tell the Dalits that caste is a reality of both Christianity and Islam in India," says a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh office bearer, who requests anonymity. "And converting will mean they lose the government benefit of job reservations."
The uproar over the issue in Parliament and the negative press in the wake of the conversion attempt in Agra have, rather than becoming a deterrent, emboldened the Sangh Parivar. Its assessment is that the Congress-led Opposition is painting itself as anti-Hindu by protesting the ghar wapasi programme. Sources within the Parivar disclose how its myriad outfits have been asked to carry out conversion-related activities away from the media spotlight in the run-up to US President Barack Obama's India visit. The change in tactic is also in deference to concerns that attention shouldn't be diverted from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development agenda, keeping in mind that assembly elections are scheduled in Delhi, which has a substantial middle class, in February.
On Sunday, Parivar outfits will help organise a tribal kumbh in Delhi's Rohini area under the auspices of the Vanavasi Raksha Parivar Yojana. Backed by businessmen like real estate major M2K Group chief Mahesh Bhagchandka, this outfit motivates people to "adopt" tribal villages to stop social ills like conversion and alcoholism. The gathering will likely be attended by hundreds of tribals "reconverted" to Hinduism.
The Sangh Parivar is convinced that a BJP government with a majority of its own is a rare opportunity to push its anti- conversion agenda. It also means an aggressive line on what the Parivar terms love jihad. Last month, RSS's Delhi unit organised a conference to discuss "the threat" posed by love jihad. There, Anil Kumar, organisational secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's city unit, boasted that the outfit would provide "financial and moral support" to Hindu men who marry Muslim women. "Woh do lekar jayenge toh hum paanch lekar aayenge (If they take two of ours, we'll take five of theirs)," Kumar said to applause at the congregation at the Kapoor Auditorium, a stone's throw from the RSS's local headquarters at Jhandewalan. He said the VHP had in the recent days extended support to 30 Hindus who had married Muslim women.
Member of Parliament Yogi Adityanath, the chief guest at the conference, said that Muslims converted Hindus by marrying Hindu women, while Christians "targeted" the head of the family through inducements. The controversial BJP MP said love jihad and conversions were a "global conspiracy" and a "weapon" to wipe out Hinduism from India. He also said Hindus who marry Muslims should not be ostracised, but accorded respect if they were willing to return to their faith.
Adityanath declared that a law to ban forced conversions was needed, and this line was echoed in the Lok Sabha by Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu during a discussion on religious conversion.
The conversion row erupted in the run-up to the assembly elections in Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir, and the din has ebbed with the elections coming to an end. But the Sangh Parivar is committed to keep the pot simmering. The issue could flare up again before the next set of assembly elections - in Bihar by November 2015 and in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam by May 2016.