Dehradun, 04 February: The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) draft was approved in the cabinet meeting held at the Chief Minister’s residence on Sunday evening under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.
The session of Uttarakhand Assembly has been called from Monday (05) February. During this session the state government can table the UCC law in the Assembly. Cabinet ministers Premchand Aggarwal, Satpal Maharaj, Dhan Singh Rawat, Ganesh Joshi, Rekha Arya and other ministers were present in the meeting.
Before the Assembly elections-2022, the government had promised the people of the state to bring a Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand as per the resolution of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
This announcement was welcomed by an overwhelming majority. As a result, the Bharatiya Janata Party government was formed again in the state and the central leadership expressed confidence in Pushkar Singh Dhami as the Chief Minister.
According to this promise, immediately after the formation of the Dhami government, the first state government in the cabinet meeting itself decided to constitute an expert committee to formulate a Uniform Civil Code and on May 27 , 2022, under the leadership of retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai formed a five-member committee.
This committee includes former Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court Pramod Kohli, social worker Manu Gaur, former Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand Shatrughan Singh and Vice Chancellor of Doon University, Prof Surekha Dangwal was included.
The committee constituted two sub-committees on 22 August 2022, out of which the work of one sub-committee was to prepare the draft of the “Code”. The work of the second sub-committee was to invite suggestions from the residents of the state and also to establish dialogue.
The committee started the public dialogue program from the country’s first village Mana and received suggestions from all sections of people in all the districts of the state. During this period, a total of 43 public dialogue programs were conducted and the dialogue program was completed with a discussion with the migrant Uttarakhandi brothers and sisters on 14 June 2023 in New Delhi.
The committee also took the help of technology in inviting suggestions from every section of the society to prepare its report. For this, along with the launch of a web portal on 08 September 2022, suggestions were invited from all the citizens of the state through SMS and WhatsApp messages.
The committee received two lakh thirty two thousand nine hundred sixty one suggestions through various mediums which is equal to about 10 percent of the families of the state. This is the first incomparable example in the country of giving suggestions for the formulation of a law.
It also reflects the awareness of the people of Uttarakhand state. 72 meetings of the committee were called to interact with about 10 thousand people and study about 02 lakh 33 thousand suggestions received and in record time, a detailed report was prepared for Uniform Civil Code in the state of Uttarakhand and the report was made available to the Chief Minister Dhami today. .
It is noteworthy that after the Bharatiya Janata Party came into existence, abolition of Article 370, construction of Maryada Purushottam Ram temple in Ayodhya and implementation of Uniform Civil Code were kept among its top priorities. Bharatiya Janata Party has already completed the work of abolition of Article 370 and construction of Ram Temple. It can be expected that Devbhoomi will fulfill its third priority of Bharatiya Janata Party from Uttarakhand, its promise of implementing Uniform Civil Code.
