Rajasthan’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is considering enacting a law to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), or a common set of laws for personal matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession for all citizens, on the lines of Uttarakhand.
“The matter [UCC] is under consideration of the government. After reviewing all the aspects of this issue, the government will bring the bill at the appropriate time,” parliamentary affairs minister Jogaram Patel told the state assembly on Thursday in response to lawmaker Kalicharan Saraf’s question.
In February, Uttarakhand became the first state to pass a law for UCC. Other BJP-ruled states such as Assam have promised to implement UCC, one of the three ideological promises of the BJP. Constitution’s Article 44, one of the directive principles of state policy, advocates UCC. But respective religion-based civil codes have governed personal matters since independence.
Opposition Congress spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi called UCC an attack on India’s diverse culture. “Different laws were made considering the suitability of different traditions of groups such as tribal and minority communities. UCC aims to finish all this diversity which is not acceptable.”