Uttarakhand Cabinet clears UCC draft, bill to be tabled before assembly on Feb 6

The Uttarakhand Cabinet cleared the Uniform Civil Code draft report during a meeting held at Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami's official residence on February 4.

The bill will now be placed before the state legislative assembly on February 6. A special four-day session will begin on February 5.

Once implemented, Uttarakhand will become the first country in India to adopt a UCC law after independence. Goa is the only state where the uniform law has been in operation for many decades. It was introduced by the Portuguese in 1867 when it occupied the state.

The final draft of the UCC running into 740 pages in four volumes was submitted to Dhami here on Friday by a five-member panel headed by retired judge of the Supreme Court Ranjana Prakash Desai.

With the passage of the UCC bill, the BJP will be fulfilling a major poll promise made in the run-up to the 2022 Assembly polls, which saw the saffron party storm to power with a landslide victory for the second consecutive term - a feat achieved for the first time by any political party in the state which came into being in 2000.