The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is set to introduce a bill to implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the West Bengal Assembly on June 29, state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shankar Ghosh told HT on Thursday.
If the bill is approved – the BJP has a large majority in the 294-member House – Bengal will become the fourth state To implement UCC after Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam. The BJP had promised to impose UCC in the eastern state in its election manifesto earlier this year.
“Five bills will be introduced on June 29. One of them relates to Union Carbide Corporation,” Ghosh said.
Read also | Chambai Soren says the Center has kept tribal communities out of UCC to protect customs
The UCC is a controversial and polarizing issue that refers to a common set of laws regarding personal matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and succession for all citizens. Article 44 of the Constitution, one of the directive principles of state policy, calls for the establishment of UCC. But religion-based civil laws have governed personal matters since independence.
So far, BJP-ruled states that have implemented UCC have moved away from regulating tribal communities, focusing instead on standardizing marriage and registration laws, divorce and maintenance procedures, and registration of direct relationships.
But Bengal will be the largest state where the BJP will try to implement UCC and the state with the largest Muslim population at around 30%.
In February 2024, Uttarakhand became the first state in the country to pass the UCC Act. Another BJP-ruled state, Gujarat, followed suit last year. The BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state has formed a committee to formulate UCC. In Goa, the Goa Civil Code, derived from the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867, provides for mandatory registration of marriage before a civil authority. Assam passed the UCC bill in May, days after the BJP won the assembly elections.
But some states took divergent paths towards UCC – Uttarakhand and Gujarat formed committees led by a former Supreme Court judge to make recommendations before drafting the bill, but Assam brought the bill directly.
Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Saujata Roy, a veteran of Mamata Banerjee’s camp, criticized the decision. “We are opposing UCC from the beginning. It is against secularism. The BJP is implementing it in states where it is in power. Jawaharlal Nehru has committed that UCC will be introduced in India only if Muslims accept it. Since Muslims have not accepted it, BJP is moving a step towards forming a communal government,” Roy told HT.
UCC has been among the most controversial issues in India, since before independence. This question sparked heated debate in the Constituent Assembly, before the framers of India’s founding document chose to include it among the non-justiciable directive principles of state policy. But Union Carbide, along with the removal of Article 370 in Kashmir and the construction of the Ram Temple, has remained at the forefront of the BJP’s ideological agenda for decades. Part of the troika of core ideological goals of the BJP, UCC was among the party’s promises in the 2024 general elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly promoted UCC, which is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution but is considered politically controversial.
Investments, a slew of welfare projects for women and UCC were the BJP’s manifesto issued by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Kolkata on April 10, days before the two-phase Legislative Assembly elections in which his party bagged 207 of the 294 seats in Bengal.
At the press conference on April 10, Shah said that UCC will be implemented in Bengal.
“All states ruled by the BJP will follow the UCC law. Bengal will be no exception. If the nation’s law and constitution treat every citizen equally, how can one citizen have four wives while another citizen can only have one?” Shah said.
The Trinamool Congress had won 80 seats when the results were announced on May 4. However, more than 60 of these legislators have since rebelled against Mamata Banerjee. It is unclear what position they will take.
