The Uttarakhand government will soon convene a special session of its Legislative Assembly, media widely reported on 11th November (Saturday). The special session will be held a week after Diwali and it will discuss and pass the draft of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill granting it legal status.
Uttarakhand is set to become the first state in the country to implement the Uniform Civil Code next week, sources said.
The five-member committee, led by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Desai, would submit a report to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in the next couple of days, they added.
According to the media reports, the draft has laid emphasis on gender equality and equal rights for daughters in ancestral properties. However, the committee recommends that the marriageable age for women should be retained as 18 rather than raising it to 21.
The source said, “It is to formulate one law that is applicable to all religions in matters related to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption.”
The broader focus of the bill is on uniformity in personal laws such as marriage registration, divorce, property rights, inter-state property rights, maintenance, custody of children, etc. Additionally, the government also seeks to ban polygamy completely in the draft bill and there is a provision for live-in couples to register their relationship, NDTV reported citing their sources.
Meanwhile, the proposed legislation would neither touch upon any religious customs for marriages nor dwell upon other rituals.
Moreover, India Today citing sources reported that, mirroring Uttarakhand, Gujarat is also contemplating to adopt the Uniform Civil Code before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. If executed, Gujarat would become the second state to enforce the Uniform Civil Code. Media reports further suggest that the Union government may use the Uttarakhand government’s draft while formulating its own Uniform Civil Code Bill, slated to be introduced at a later stage.
It is important to note that on 27th May 2022, the Uttarakhand government set up the expert committee for the implementation of the UCC. It mandated the committee to check all relevant laws that control personal citizen matters for people living in the state.
This stemmed from the fact that the implementation of UCC was one of the major poll promises of the BJP in the run-up to the state Assembly elections last year. As a result, the committee was announced after the first Cabinet meeting of the newly-formed Uttarakhand government led by Pushkar Singh Dhami.