Ban on polygamy in U’khand UCC draft

DEHRADUN: A complete ban on polygamy and child marriage, a common marriageable age for girls across all faiths and enforcing similar grounds and procedures for divorce are understood to be among the major recommendations of a panel which drafted a Uniform Civil Code for Uttarakhand.

The five-member government-appointed panel, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, Friday submitted the four-volume report running into 749 pages to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who said the draft will be examined, studied and discussed before it is tabled in the assembly on February 6.

A special four-day session of the assembly has been convened from February 5-8 to pass a legislation on the UCC.

Sources said the panel has also recommended that boys and girls will have equal inheritance rights, registration of marriages will be made mandatory and the marriageable age for girls would be increased so that they can become graduates before marriage.

Couples whose marriages are not registered would not get any government facilities and arrangements will be made at the rural level to register marriages, sources said. The contents of the draft, however, have not been made officially public.

If implemented, Uttarakhand will become the first state after Independence to adopt the UCC. It has been operational in Goa since the days of Portugese rule.