Uttarakhand will be the first state to implement a Uniform Civil Code, says Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.
The Uttarakhand Cabinet, headed by Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, agreed on Thursday, a day after being sworn in, to appoint an expert committee to oversee the state’s execution of the Uniform Civil Code. The decision of the Uniform Civil Code has made at the new cabinet’s first meeting, which got held here.
Dhami held a vote on the Uniform Civil Code as soon as the state cabinet met for its first meeting. It was one of the promises he made before the election, and he has fulfilled it.
During his last day of campaigning for the February 14 state assembly elections, he said that the government of the BJP would set up a committee of legal experts, senior citizens, and intellectuals to write a Uniform Civil Code.
Dhami About Uniform Civil Code
Dhami said that if the Uniform Civil Code is put into place in Uttarakhand as quickly as possible, everyone in the state will have more rights.
Uniform Civil Code would improve societal peace, promote gender justice, encourage women’s empowerment, and contribute to protecting the state’s remarkable cultural-spiritual heritage and environment, Dhami said ahead of the hill state’s assembly elections.
He added that the Uniform Civil Code contains the same rules for everyone, regardless of religion, including marriage, divorce, property ownership, and inheritance.
Goa is the only state in the country that still has the UCC, which is an extension of the Portuguese Civil Code from the 19th century. When the state was freed from Portuguese rule in 1961, the UCC was not abolished.
CM Dhami said that Uttarakhand will “learn from Goa, which has set an example for the rest of the country by setting up a kind of UCC for its people.” I expect other states to do the same.
In the Constitution, Article 44 says that all citizens of the country should have equal rights under the law, no matter what their religion is. This move will go a long way toward that goal! The Supreme Court has also asked for it to be done from time to time,” CM further added.
What exactly is the Uniform Civil Code? (UCC)
Marriage, inheritance, adoption, succession, etc., are controlled by the personal laws of the different religious groups. That means Hindus have their own rules about marriage, and Muslim marriages get governed by the rules of the community they live. Similarly, Parsis and Christians have their unique laws governing similar situations.
Separate laws for distinct groups, on the other hand, have long been considered as adding to legal and administrative difficulties. As noted by the Delhi High Court, this opens the possibility of “issues arising as a result of conflicts under several personal laws.”
Since these difficulties were not addressed by the British when they codified Indian laws, Founding Fathers of the Indian Republic added an article to Part IV of the Constitution of India, titled “Principles of State Policy.”
Article 44 states that the “State should seek to ensure for the people a uniform civil code across the territory of India.” Yet, its inclusion in the aforementioned section implies that Article 44 is not obligatory, so it is left to Parliament to pass legislation to include UCC. According to Article 37, those clauses aren’t enforceable by a court, and it’s up to the state to implement them when establishing legislation.
Despite not being implemented, the directive principles have been considered “critical” to the country’s operation.Dr. BR Ambedkar, India’s first Law Minister, thought that even though the UCC was good, it should be postponed until a more appropriate time.
Required or Desirable
In a 2018 study, the Law Commission said that a UCC “is not essential nor desirable at this stage” for India. It said that a diverse country like India needs different laws to meet the needs of all its people and that adopting uniformity would make things even more complicated than they already are.
The Constitution exempts many individuals, like tribals, etc., from some laws. Both civil and criminal procedural codes provide exclusions. “UCC is not a fix, and a composite law is not possible,” it said.
To conclude
Despite Dhami’s assertions, Uttarakhand may not be the first state to apply the Uniform Civil Code since Goa, another BJP-controlled state, is now the only state in India to do so.
Goa possesses what India’s founding fathers envisioned—a uniform civil code. And I’ve had the honor of enforcing that code. It governs all Goans regardless of religious affiliation in marriages and inheritance. I’ve heard a lot of scholarly discussion on the Uniform Civil Code. “I would invite all those academics to come here and study the judicial process,” stated former Chief Justice of India SA Bobde last year.
Edited by Subbuthai Padma
Published by Iram Rizvi
