The Pushkar Singh Dhami government is likely to table the Uniform Civil Code Bill in the Uttarakhand Assembly during the upcoming session, sources in the know of the developments said.
According to reports, the Uttarakhand assembly will convene between February 5 and 8 and the Pushkar Singh Dhami government is expected to table the bill on February 6.
Uttarakhand’s Finance and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Premchand Aggarwal told ANI, "We are hopeful that the UCC Committee will submit its report on February 2. After this, the UCC bill will tabled in the state assembly on February 6." Earlier, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said that the UCC committee is expected to submit draft bill to the government on February 2.
"UCC was our resolve. We had promised during the elections that we will work towards bringing the UCC after the formation of government. The draft committee has completed its work and conveyed to us that they will hand over the draft to us on February 2. As soon as the draft is received, the formalities shall be fulfilled and the Assembly session has been called from February 5. We will work towards bringing it as an Act," Dhami told PTI on Monday.
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.
The UCC has been one of the three key poll planks of the BJP for a long time. UCC refers to a common set of laws that are applicable to all the citizens of India that is not based on religion and deals with marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption among other personal matters.