The Uttarakhand government, under the leadership of chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, has given the green light to the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) draft report during a cabinet meeting at the chief minister’s residence on Sunday evening.
The approved draft, which was submitted by a five-member UCC panel to the government on Friday, is now set to be presented during a specially-convened assembly session scheduled for February 6.
Once the assembly passes it and it becomes an Act, Uttarakhand will become the first state post-independence to implement UCC. Assam and Gujarat have also expressed interest in adopting the “Uttarakhand UCC model”.
The cabinet meeting on Sunday evening was unexpected, as there were speculations that the UCC issue would be addressed on Tuesday during the assembly session after the cabinet had convened on Saturday without discussing the UCC matter.
Sources revealed that the sole agenda of the Sunday cabinet meeting was to endorse the UCC draft report. Before the official approval, the entire cabinet received a detailed presentation of the report. Notably, there was no official briefing following Sunday’s cabinet meeting.
Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai submits final UCC report to Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami
STs exempted from purview of UCC bill
The UCC draft committee, led by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, presented a 740-page report divided into four volumes on Feb 2. The submission of the draft marked the conclusion of an almost two-year process that began on May 27, 2022.
Some of the key proposals put forth by the committee include the prohibition of polygamy, halala, iddat, and child marriage, a uniform age for girls’ marriage across all religions, equal inheritance rights for both genders, and mandatory registration of live-in relationships.
In addition, scheduled tribes (STs) have been excluded from the scope of the bill. The tribal population in the state, constituting approximately 3%, had been expressing opposition to UCC due to the special status granted to them.
