With gender equality as top focus, Uttarakhand UCC panel report likely before mid-July
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 29
Achievement of gender equality will be the top focus for the five member committee on Uniform Civil Code which the Uttarakhand government had constituted last year to take a legislative lead on a subject that continues to divide the political spectrum.
The panel, chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, is likely to submit its report to the BJP-ruled Uttarakhand government before mid-July, it is learnt. Once submitted, this will be the first ever UCC legislation draft to see light of day in the country and would carry the potential of guiding future endeavors in the direction.
The panel will look at gaps in personal laws governing marriage, divorce, maintenance, succession, guardianship, adoptions, custody across faiths and will make both statutory and non-statutory recommendations to address prevailing gender inequalities.
The committee is likely to recommend raising the legal age of marriage for girls upwards from 18 and suggest making the enhanced age uniform across faiths. Currently the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and the Special Marriage Act prescribe 18 and 21 as the legal age for marriage of girls and boys. In the Muslim Sharia law, girls can be married at any time between adolescence and adulthood after they attain puberty.
Sources say the panel, in its many public hearings, received an overwhelming women’s input favouring raising the legal marriageable age to 21 with some suggesting even 25.
The trickiest issues before the panel pertain to bringing uniformity in practices governing prohibited relationships.
“There are different practices across faiths on the issue of prohibited marriages between close relations. Simplifying these practices is a major challenge,” sources said adding that while majority stakeholders favoured abolition of polyandry, polygamy, a common practice among tribal societies, was a tricky area.
Uniformity on grounds for the dissolution of marriage based on the presumption of death could be recommended in some form, say sources.
In the Hindu law, marriage can be dissolved on presumption of death if a spouse has been missing for at least 7 years, as against four years among Muslims. Parsi personal law is silent on the matter.
Rights of adopted children is another area exercising the minds of the panel, with pro child recommendations expected.
Unlike in the Hindu law, there is no prohibition for a Christian couple to adopt a male or female child even if they have a natural born male or female child. While in Hindu law, the adopted child inherits the same rights as a natural one, in other faiths, the child may not automatically inherit the property of adoptive parents.
In Muslims, there is no adoption facility.
On maintenance too, different faiths have different practices despite Section 125 CrPC, a secular provision, mandating maintenance for wife, child, father, and mother.
Suggestions on simplification of laws related to divorce, adoptions and marriage registrations are likely in the draft.
TRICKY ISSUES
* Need to raise the legal marriageable age of girls and make it uniform across faiths.
* How to deal with the practices of polyandry and polygamy prevalent in certain communities?
* How to reconcile different personal laws on division of property between legal heirs, inheritance and maintenance?
* Need to bring uniformity in adoption laws and secure the rights of adopted children across faiths with special focus on rights of the differently abled children.
* Easing complex marriage registration processes, simplifying existing divorce laws; bringing uniformity in grounds for dissolution of marriage across faiths.
