The committee tasked with drafting Madhya Pradesh’s Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is set to submit its final report to Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav within the next one or two days, with its mandated 60-day period now complete. The committee, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, is expected to hold a virtual meeting to settle the last points of the draft before formally handing it over, according to media reports. The proposed draft, covering marriage, divorce, property rights and live-in relationships, would replace the separate personal laws that currently govern these matters for different religious communities in the state.
Committee member secretary Ajay Katesaria had earlier said the report was being prepared in two parts, one containing the committee’s recommendations and the other detailing the public consultations and suggestions received across the state. At a meeting in New Delhi on Friday, June 26, the committee was informed that more than 9 lakh (900,000) people had shared their views on the proposed code, of whom 90 per cent, according to government figures cited at the meeting, supported the UCC. The committee also studied over 2,000 suggestions from social, religious, legal and other institutions, besides those from individual citizens.
Earlier, on June 22, the committee held a separate meeting in Bhopal to hear suggestions from various community groups. Shatrughan Singh, the panel’s senior advisor and former Uttarakhand chief secretary, said the final draft would be ready within eight to ten days, and that the committee was considering mandatory registration of live-in relationships within 30 days, to ensure maintenance rights for women and inheritance rights for children born of such relationships in case of a dispute.
The proposed live-in registration clause has drawn opposition from both Hindu and Muslim groups, in what is otherwise an unusual point of agreement between them. Chandrashekhar Tiwari, president of the Hindu Utsav Samiti, said the UCC should not have a live-in column at all, calling it contrary to Sanatan culture. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind also opposed including live-in provisions in the code.
Separately, government records accessed by The New Indian Express showed that of the more than 9.5 lakh individual suggestions received, around 5.5 lakh, or 58 per cent, came from men, about 4 lakh from women, and close to 100 from transgender persons. Support ran higher among women than men overall: 95 per cent of the 3.8 lakh women who responded backed the code, against 92 per cent of the 5.1 lakh men. Among Hindus, 97 per cent of the 3.70 lakh women and 95 per cent of the 5.20 lakh men were in favour.
Among the state’s Muslim community, the numbers showed a sharper divide along gender lines. Only 44,000 Muslims submitted suggestions on the issue, the records showed, with 15,000 of them being women and 29,000 men. Of the women, 71 per cent, or 10,500, supported the UCC, compared with 38 per cent of the men. Other reports citing state figures put combined Muslim support at 49 per cent.
The committee has also studied UCC provisions already in force in Uttarakhand and Gujarat while preparing the Madhya Pradesh draft, according to Singh, both of which require mandatory registration of live-in relationships. The Madhya Pradesh committee is additionally weighing whether Scheduled Tribe individuals who marry outside their community should continue to retain certain tribal rights, including those tied to inheritance and property, along with proposals on banning polygamy and making marriage registration mandatory, while leaving voluntary registration open for tribal communities.
The consultation process has drawn mixed political reactions. At a meeting called to gather suggestions, the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Aam Aadmi Party did not send representatives, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) took part. The BJP demanded that deliberately providing false information before marriage be made a punishable offence, and called for a provision to de-register inherited property from children who fail to maintain elderly or senior citizen parents. CPI(M) leader P V Ramachandran said the UCC was being used to “trouble people” while real issues such as unemployment and inequality went unaddressed. Samajwadi Party state spokesperson Yash Bharatiya said the committee had not even invited the SP to present its views, and accused the BJP of using the UCC to cover up its own failures.
Some Muslim religious leaders have also pushed back. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s Madhya Pradesh unit chief, Haji Mohammad Harun, who had also opposed the live-in clause, said the government was citing the Constitution’s Directive Principles, the non-binding governance guidelines that include the UCC provision, while ignoring other directive principles such as prohibition and equal pay for equal work, and accused it of targeting personal law alone. Bhopal city qazi Syed Mushtaq Ali Nadvi said the community had already made compromises on civil law and warned the government not to touch personal law, calling it a hornet’s nest that would create trouble if disturbed.
Adding to the criticism, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said on Monday, June 29, that the state government ought to hold back on implementing the UCC until it has the backing of every religious group and community in the state, and that any such law should follow wide-ranging consultations rather than be pushed through.
The Madhya Pradesh government is expected to table the UCC Bill during the Assembly’s Monsoon Session, which begins on July 20. If implemented as planned, Madhya Pradesh would become the third state after Uttarakhand and Gujarat to roll out a Uniform Civil Code, with Assam having also implemented one and Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan separately setting up their own panels to examine the matter.
