Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code Draft: Ban on Halal, Mandatory Registration for Live-in Relationships Among Recommendations

A special four-day session of the Uttarakhand assembly has been convened from February 5 to 8 to pass legislation on the Uttarakhand Uniform Civil, which was recommended by the UCC panel. According to the draft report which is going to be tabled in the assembly on February 6, recommended a complete ban on polygamy and child marriage, a common marriageable age for girls across all faiths and enforcing similar grounds, procedures for divorce and mandatory registration for live-in relationships were also recommended..

The praposed draft was prepared by the five-member government-appointed panel, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai and submitted the four-volume report running into 749 pages to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. The draft report is divided into four volumes. The first is the committee’s report, the second is the draft code in English, the third is a public consultation report of the committee, and the fourth volume is the draft code in Hindi.

Sources told news agency PTI that the panel has also recommended that boys and girls will have equal inheritance rights, registration of marriages will be made mandatory, and the marriageable age for girls will be increased so that they can become graduates before marriage. Couples whose marriages are not registered would not get any government facilities and arrangements will be made at the rural level to register marriages, sources said.

The contents of the draft, however, have not been made officially public. The UCC will provide a legal framework for uniform marriage, divorce, land, property and inheritance laws for all citizens, irrespective of their religion in the state. If implemented, Uttarakhand will become the first state in the country after Independence to adopt the UCC. It has been operational in Goa since the days of the Portugese rule.