The five-member expert committee designated by the Uttarakhand government to prepare a report on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has completed the drafting of the document after around 13 months of consultations and 38 public meetings that were organised by the panel.
While the concept of a uniform civil law was welcomed by some, many people requested the committee to ensure that the discussion on the topic remains separate from politics. In certain cases, it was suggested that all communities should be consulted before implementing any such law.
Questions were also raised regarding whether the UCC provisions would be in contradiction to Article 25, which guarantees the freedom of conscience, the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate religion for all citizens, and the potential impact on ongoing legal cases concerning personal laws.
Some suggested that once the draft was completed, the committee should identify diverse stakeholders and have a consultation with them before submitting the report to the state government.
In the 13 months since it was formed by the government of the hill state, the committee received received an estimated 2.5 lakh suggestions and comments, of which around 2.3 lakh came via handwritten letters, registered post, emails and submissions on an online portal, sources said, as reported by The Indian Express. But the most useful suggestions came from public interactions.
Most of the written suggestions are one-sided, but the two-way communication in public consultations generated more meaningful suggestions, a source said, as quoted by IE.
An office was allocated in Dehradun to the expert committee where four rooms are filled with letters and three to four people have been put to work to go through each letter and organise them into different sections.
Around 70 per cent of the letters expressed support for the UCC, according to the sources quoted in IE report.
On 30 June, Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a former judge of the Supreme Court who heads the five-member committee, informed reporters, “It gives me immense pleasure to inform you that the drafting of the proposed Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand is now complete. The report of the expert committee, along with the draft, will be printed and submitted to the government of Uttarakhand”
The committee report and a draft of the proposed law are expected to come out by the end of the month. Some other states and the Centre are expected to use this as a template to draft their own legislation on the UCC.
On June 14, the Law Commission of India issued a notice inviting public views on the UCC within 30 days.
The Law Commission also met the Uttarakhand expert committee. Despite the Law Commission being a constitutional body and much larger than the Uttarakhand expert committee by protocol, they still held a meeting with the panel to discuss the issues, a source was quoted as saying in the IE report.
Sources said they were confident that the Uttarakhand UCC would be receive widespread since its focus is on women and children, and is “very progressive, beyond people’s imagination”.
Since the Uttarakhand expert panel was constituted on May 27 last year, it has taken views and suggestions from local residents.
Public consultations were held in many places, including Mana, referred to as the ‘First Indian Village’ due to its proximity to the Tibetan border, and several other remote villages with limited road access.