The Uniform Civil Code brought in by the Uttarakhand government appears not fully aligned with the spirit of the Supreme Court’s 2010 and 2013 orders that endorsed the right of unmarried couples to live together; the latter of the two rulings termed live-in relationships as “neither a crime, nor a sin”. The court asked the legislature to frame a suitable law to provide “adequate and effective protection, especially to the woman and children born out of live-in relationships”. The spirit behind the ruling was to provide a legal framework to safeguard the interests of the women and children in such relationships.
The Uttarakhand code, on the other hand, appears more focused on moral policing than providing protection to such couples. The bill requires a live-in couple to inform the registrar about their relationship within one month of moving in. The registrar would conduct an enquiry into the relationship seeking “additional information or evidence” from the partners or from any other person. The registrar is also tasked with informing the local police for record and the parents if either of the partners is found to be under the age of 21. By making the registration of such relationships compulsory, the Uttarakhand code may have intruded into the privacy of individuals, which the Supreme Court has recognised as a fundamental right.
This provision could also expose live-in couples to the more conservative elements of society. In addition, the provision empowering the registrar to inform the parents of live-in partners appears to have impinged on consenting adults’ right to choice. The registrar also has the power to find out if the consent of one of the partners was obtained by force, coercion, undue influence, misrepresentation or fraud concerning the identity of the other partner.
The other provision of the Uttarakhand code that is likely to invite legal scrutiny is the criminalisation of non-registration of a live-in relationship. An offence such as this should at best have been made a civil offence punishable with a fine. The loopholes in the new law and the wider implications of its provisions may soon bring the ball back to the top court, which would again have to weigh an individual’s right to privacy and choice, and the state’s powers to regulate live-in relationships.