Uttarakhand cabinet clears Uniform Civil Code, House set to follow

DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand government, in a cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami at his residence on Sunday evening, approved the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) draft report.

The approved draft, which a five-member UCC panel had submitted to the government on Friday, will now be tabled during a specially-convened assembly session scheduled for February 6.

After the assembly passes it and it becomes an Act, Uttarakhand will become the first state post-independence to implement UCC. Governments of Assam and Gujarat have also shown interest in adopting the "Uttarakhand UCC model".

Sunday evening's meeting came as a surprise to many since it was being surmised that the cabinet, which had convened on Saturday without taking up the UCC issue, would now pass the draft on Tuesday when the assembly session was called.

Sources said the cabinet was convened on Sunday with a single agenda - to endorse the UCC draft report, adding that prior to the official nod, the entire cabinet was given a detailed presentation of the report. Notably, there was no official briefing following Sunday's cabinet huddle.



STs exempted from purview of UCC bill The UCC draft committee, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, had submitted a 740-page report -- divided in four volumes -- on Feb 2. The submission of the draft culminated an almost two-year process which started on May 27, 2022.

Some of the key proposals put forth by the committee include prohibition of polygamy, halala, iddat and child marriage, uniform age for girls' marriage across all religions, equal inheritance rights for both genders, and mandatory registration of live-in relationships.

Also, scheduled tribes (STs) have been exempted from the purview of the bill. The tribal population in the state, which is around 3%, had been voicing its dissent against UCC in wake of the special status accorded to them.

Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, and Mini Crossword.