Maharashtra constitutes panel below retired SC choose to draft UCC laws
Maharashtra has constituted a seven-member panel below retired Supreme Courtroom choose Ranjana Desai to arrange draft laws to implement a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), or a standard set of legal guidelines for private issues akin to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession for all.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis mentioned the panel will submit its report inside six months. “Primarily based on its suggestions, the federal government is planning to introduce a invoice on the UCC throughout the winter session of the state legislature,” he informed the state meeting on Wednesday.
Maharashtra is the newest in a collection of Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP)-ruled states to represent panels below Justice (retd) Desai for the implementation of UCC.
Final month, Rajasthan initiated the method for UCC, turning into the fifth BJP-ruled state to take action during the last two years. In February 2024, Uttarakhand turned the primary state to cross a UCC regulation. Two extra BJP-ruled states, Gujarat and Assam, adopted go well with this yr.
BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh has additionally arrange a committee to draft the UCC and plans to desk a invoice this month. Tribals have been excluded from the purview of frequent frameworks governing private issues below the UCC in all these states.
The Structure’s Article 44, one of many directive ideas of state coverage, advocates for a UCC, a contentious and polarising problem. However respective religion-based civil codes have ruled private issues since independence.
A pan-India UCC is the BJP’s third unfulfilled ideological promise. The development of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomous standing below the Structure’s Article 370, the opposite two main ideological objectives, have been achieved for the reason that BJP got here to energy on the Centre in 2014.
The Maharashtra UCC panel will embody retired Bombay excessive courtroom judges RC Chavan and SG Mehare, former chief secretary DK Jain, ex-advocate basic Birendra Saraf, constitutional knowledgeable Ramesh Patange, and activist Suvarna Rawal. Fadnavis mentioned the panel will study the authorized, administrative, and social features of implementing a UCC and submit its suggestions.
