Assam mulls ban on polygamy, to set up committee

New Delhi, May 9

The Assam Government has decided to set up an expert committee to examine whether the state legislature can prohibit polygamy.

Making this announcement on the occasion of the completion of two years of the BJP rule in Assam, state Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the committee would examine the provisions of The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Act, 1937, read with Article 25 of the Constitution, along with the Directive Principles of State Policy. “The committee will engage in extensive discussions with all stakeholders, including legal experts, to arrive at a well-informed decision,” Sarma said. He said the state government was not going through the Uniform Civil Code process but wanted to ban polygamy under a state Act for which it would seek the expert committee’s opinion. Sarma had also launched a crackdown against child marriages recently.

Speaking on his government completing two years, Sarma said the past two years were the first since the Assam agitation of 1979 when the state did not see any agitations or bandhs.

“We have resolved most of the fault lines in our society. The past two years have been unique in our history. For the first time since the Assam agitation of 1979, we haven’t seen any bandh or agitation that can hurt the industrial environment of the state. We have witnessed minimal rhino poaching,” the CM said.

He cited the Assam Budget for this fiscal in which the state has announced a corpus of Rs 3,000 crore to convert all members of self-help groups to micro enterprise so that they can contribute to the GDP growth.

“This year, we will promote two lakh active entrepreneurs by giving a clean subsidy of Rs 2 lakh each,” the CM said. “People of Assam have created an environment which is totally investment-friendly,” the CM noted.