Committee will submit UCC draft to govt on Feb 2: Uttarakhand CM Dhami

Dehradun: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the draft of the Uniform Civil Code will be submitted to the government on Friday and a bill on the code brought in the assembly session beginning February 5 to implement it in the state.

A committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai was formed by the Dhami government in 2022 to prepare a draft UCC for Uttarakhand, which could become the first state to have one - barring Goa which inherited a common code from the Portuguese at the time of Liberation.

In a post in Hindi on X, Dhami said, "The committee formed to prepare the draft of the Uniform Civil Code will submit its draft to the state government on February 2 and we will implement the Uniform Civil Code in the state by bringing a bill in the upcoming assembly session." The BJP government has always been committed to implementing the UCC in the state as promised by the party to the people ahead of the assembly elections, the chief minister said.

On Saturday, state's Finance and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Premchand Agarwal said a debate on the draft of the UCC could be on the agenda of the four-day assembly session, if it is submitted by the government-appointed expert panel in time.

However, the panel has been given an extension of 15 days and it is free to submit the draft of the UCC whenever it is ready, Agarwal had said.

The sub-committees of the five-member expert committee held extensive discussions and took suggestions from various communities, classes, stakeholders and political parties to prepare the draft of the UCC.

It is believed that the Uttarakhand code could become a template for similar laws in other BJP-run states -- or even at the national level.

Article 44 of the Constitution provides that the state shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. UCC is supposed to be a common code of personal laws for people of all religions.