Uttarakhand govt to get expert panel’s UCC report on Feb 2: Pushkar Singh Dhami
Pushkar Singh Dhami said his government had always been committed to implementing UCC in the state in line with PM Modi’s vision of “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”
DEHRADUN: A five-member committee constituted to prepare a draft on the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in Uttarakhand will submit its report to the state government on February 2, chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said on Monday. Dhami said the report will be tabled in the state assembly in the upcoming session during Feb 5-8.
“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 chief minister said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Dhami said his government had always been committed to implementing UCC in the state in line with PM Modi’s vision of “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”.
UCC refers to a common set of laws that will subsume customary laws across faiths and tribes and govern issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and maintenance. UCC has, for years, been a constant in the manifesto of the BJP, along with the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and the abrogation of Article 370, both of which have happened.
In the run-up to the state elections in February 2022, Pushkar Singh Dhami announced that implementation of UCC would be the first decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government if it were voted back to power.
After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the elections, the Uttarakhand cabinet decided at its first meeting on March 24 to set up the committee to work out the details of the implementation of UCC. The formal order to constitute the expert panel headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Desai was issued on May 27, 2022.
“This decision has been taken so that the law is the same for everyone here,” Dhami said after the order was issued in May 2022, underlining that adopting the UCC was one of the ‘Directive Principles of State Policy’. According to Article 44 of the Constitution, “The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India”.
