Moment of pride, says Pushkar Singh Dhami as UCC Bill gets President’s assent
Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said it was a moment of joy and pride for Uttarakhand that the UCC Bill has been approved by President Murmu
DEHRADUN: President Droupadi Murmu has given assent to the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill passed by the Uttarakhand assembly on February 7, chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said on Wednesday.
In a post on X, Dhami said it was a moment of joy and pride for the state that the UCC Bill passed by the assembly has been approved by the President. The implementation of the uniform civil code will give equal rights to all citizens and help curb the oppression of women, he said.
The proposed law, which seeks to standardise laws governing marriage, divorce, inheritance and maintenance, will subsume customary laws across faiths and tribes. With 392 sections divided into four parts and seven chapters, it provides for equal rights to women in marriage, divorce, alimony and inheritance of property, proscribes certain kinds of relationships, bans polygamy, sets the marriageable age for men and women (21 years and 18 years respectively), and makes registration of marriages mandatory.
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Uttarakhand’s Scheduled Tribes, who account for 2.89% of the state’s population, are exempted from the law.
The proposed law will be operationalised after the government finalises the rules. On February 10, the Uttarakhand home department set up a nine-member committee headed by retired chief secretary Shatrughan Singh.
After its first meeting, Singh told reporters on February 25 that three sub-committees had been set up to formulate the rules, making facilities user-friendly with technological intervention and training of personnel who will provide facilities like registration of marriage at the village and city level.
Also Read: Why Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code is a progressive leap into the future
Singh said the UCC was broadly divided into three parts: marriage and divorce, live-in relationship, and succession (intestate and testamentary). “We aim to frame rules for their implementation in the earliest possible time.”
Uttarakhand’s draft law and the rules are expected to be the template for other states such as Assam and Gujarat that have promised to implement uniform civil code, a recurring theme in the manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party for more than a decade.
The bill also aims to regulate live-in relationships making it mandatory for couples to register themselves with a registering authority and provides legal rights to children born out of live-in relationships. Not registering a live-in relationship could result in jail of up to three months and a fine of ₹10,000 or both. The bill also provides for significant changes in existing inheritance laws.
For sharing of property, where there is no registered will, the bill provides for an equal share of the property among immediate family members. Sons and daughters will have an equal share of the property according to the bill, which also has a special provision protecting the concept of Hindu United Family (HUF).
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