Representative image of Uniform Civil Code.
Credit: iStock Photo
Lucknow: The draft report on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), prepared by the expert panel, headed by Justice (retd) Ranjana Prakash Desai, in Uttarakhand was submitted to the state government on Friday.
The members of the panel handed over the draft report to Uttarakhand chief minister Pushker Singh Dhami in the state capital Dehradun.According to the sources, the draft report would be considered by the state cabinet in its meeting on Saturday after which it was likely to be tabled in the state assembly on February six.
Sources said that the panel had suggested drastic changes in the matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and guardianship.
According to the sources, the draft report has suggested an increase in the age of marriage and made the registration of marriage mandatory. It has also recommended identical grounds to the husband and wife in cases of divorce and a ban on polygamy.
It has also recommended maintenance for the parents of the wife by the husband in the event of her death and if there is no one else to take care of them.The Panel has also recommended equal rights for Muslim women in cases of adoption.
It has also recommended a ban on 'iddat' (the period a Muslim woman must observe after the death of her husband or after a divorce and in this period she can not marry another man) and 'halala' (when a man irrevocably divorces his wife and wants to marry her again. In that case the woman will have to marry another man, get divorce, observe the period of iddat and only then can she marry the first husband).
Speaking to reporters later the chief minister said that the expert panel had invited suggestions from the residents of the state before preparing the draft report. He said that the Panel had received more than 2.32 lakh suggestions which were studied by it before finalising its report.
Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh government also dropped hints that it could follow the examples of Uttarakhand on UCC. ''UCC has always been one of the major planks of BJP...we welcome the move to implement UCC in Uttarakhand....UP is not in disagreement with UCC...we will implement it at the right moment,'' UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said here on Friday.