CHENNAI: In fulfillment of the Uttarakhand BJP’s pre-poll promise, the state government is all set to implement the Uniform Civil Code in the next two months, a top law officer said.
Justifying the need for the UCC, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said during elections to the 70-member assembly in February that the “security of cultural and religious heritage of Uttarakhand, its environment and borders is important not just for the state but for the entire country”.
While Uttarakhand will be the first state in India to implement the controversial law, the Goa Civil Code has been in force in there since Portuguese times and is considered a UCC. In Goa, irrespective of their religious identities, all people are bound by the same law related to marriage, divorce and succession.
Speaking exclusively to TNIE, Advocate General Surya Narayan Babulkar said that “Articles 245 and 246 of the Constitution empower the central and state legislatures to make laws and matters on which the Centre and state governments can make laws are subsumed in the three lists mentioned in the seventh schedule of the Constitution”.
That the Dhami government is serious about adopting the UCC is borne out by the recent constitution of a five-member committee headed by retired SC judge, Justice Ranjana Desai. The other members of the committee are Uttarakhand HC’s Justice (retd) Pramod Kohli, former senior bureaucrat Shatrughan Singh, social activist Manu Gaur and Doon University V-C Surekha Dangwal.