UCC draft is prepared: Expert Committee on UCC in Uttarakhand

Dehradun, Jul 1: The expert committee for a Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand is all set to submit its report, along with a draft of the proposed law, to the state government by the end of July. It is learnt that the Union government is expected to use it as a template for drafting its own UCC Bill and ruling party members hope to take it up in the winter session of Parliament.

 

 

 

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, headed by BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi, has convened a meeting of the panel on July 3 to hear the views of the Department of Legal Affairs, Legislative Department, and the Law Commission of India on the June 14 public notice by the Law Commission on the UCC.

 

 

 

On Friday, Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a former judge of the Supreme Court who heads the five-member Uttarakhand expert committee, told the media: “It gives me immense pleasure to inform you that the drafting of the proposed Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand is now complete. The report of the expert committee along with the draft will be printed and submitted to the Government of Uttarakhand.” Sources said the draft Uttarakhand Bill, with an underlying theme of gender equality, will have provisions of equal rights for daughters and sons in property inheritance, the equal duty of both parents and equal grounds for adoption and divorce in all communities, cutting across religions. It will also have provisions that will make a declaration mandatory to start and terminate live-in relationships. “Declaration will be mandatory for live-in relationships – to begin and terminate. This is to avoid both men and women getting cheated later,” a source said. “Similarly, there were widespread demands for equal rights to both daughters and sons in inheriting properties as well as in children’s duties towards the parents,” the source said. Although the report has clear recommendations for a two-child norm in government jobs, in availing welfare schemes and government contracts, the committee is still to take a final decision on whether it should be part of the draft Bill. Sources said the Uttarakhand expert committee looked at a Private Member’s Bill moved in 2018 by BJP MP and present Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan. “Around 125 MPs had signed the Bill on Responsible Parenthood. It has provisions for two-child norms. It is a part of the report, but it has not yet been finalized if it should be part of the draft Bill,” the source said. Taking note of strong demand from Muslim women, the draft Bill, sources said, will reject polygamy, iddat (the period a woman must observe after the death of her husband or after a divorce during which she may not marry another man) and halala (a practice in which a woman, after being divorced by triple talaq, marries another man, consummates the marriage, and gets divorced again in order to be able to remarry her former husband).

 

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Although the panel received many suggestions on the rights of the LGBTQ, it is waiting for the Supreme Court verdict on same-sex marriage. The apex court has reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking the right to marriage for members of the LGBTQIA+ community under the Special Marriage Act, of 1954. Unlike the Law Commission of India, which can advise the government on legal reform with its report, the Uttarakhand expert committee under Justice Desai has the mandate to oversee the implementation of the UCC in the state. “This means the committee, which has its term until September 26, can even form the rules once the state Assembly passes the legislation,” a source said. Sources in the Uttarakhand committee, formed in May 2022, said that during its public interactions, the panel consulted around 2.5 lakh people, and most demands from the people, irrespective of community, were on “population control, a ban on polygamy, increasing the marriage age of girls to 21, equal rights to properties and declaration of live-in relationships”.