BHOPAL: Less than a month after Gujarat passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill, 2026, now another BJP-ruled state Madhya Pradesh, has started working on enacting similar legislation in the next six months.
According to informed official and political sources in the state capital, following signals from Delhi, the central Indian state’s Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, has asked the state’s home department to start working on drafting the Bill.
A state-level committee is likely to be formed soon, which will study the UCC bills/laws of Gujarat and Uttarakhand, including what was the process adopted by them, how it was implemented and other associated aspects.
Highly placed sources confided to TNIE that the CM gave enough hints to his colleague ministers during Tuesday's cabinet meeting, asking them to be well versed with the issue, which has been a key part of the BJP’s national agenda for a long time.
It’s implementation by successive BJP-ruled states will aid its national implementation by building legal precedents, overcoming logistical hurdles and building public acceptance. The phased, state-led approach is considered more workable than an abrupt national implementation, sources added.
According to official sources in Bhopal, the high-level committee, which will be formed soon, and the home department will oversee the entire process of drafting the UCC bill for Madhya Pradesh.
With 21% of MP’s population being tribals, the highest in any state of the country, the critical section of the state’s population, may well be exempted from the planned Bill, on the lines of Uttarakhand and Gujarat, where the scheduled tribes (STs) are explicitly exempt from the UCC passed in 2024 and 2026 respectively.
“The main challenge while drafting the UCC Bill in MP relates to tribal and particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs), especially as they follow traditional marriage systems and practices, like the Dapa practice, where the groom’s family pays the ‘bride price’ to the bride’s father, the Bhageli/Lamsena marriage, where young man and woman elope with mutual consent followed by the recognition of their union later,” sources said.
Other peculiar tribal practices include the Natra practice, where couples live without formal marriage.
With STs being explicitly exempt from the UCC in Gujarat and Uttarakhand and the Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently assuring the tribal communities in poll-bound Assam, about keeping them away from its ambit of implementation in the northeastern state after elections, a similar system is likely to be followed in MP also.
Currently, two BJP-ruled states, Uttarakhand and Gujarat have enacted the UCC in February 2024 and in March 2026 respectively, while in another BJP-ruled state Goa, the UCC has been in force since long based on the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867.
Importantly, former MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, had in December 2022, announced forming a committee to study and implement UCC and one marriage norm for everyone, but nothing concrete was actually done by his government in the next 11 months while he remained in power in the state.