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 amongthemajorrecommendations of a panel which drafted a Uniform Civil Code for Uttarakhand. The five-member Government-appointed panel, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana PrakashDesai,on 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 beforeitistabledintheAssembly on February 6. A special four-day session of theAssemblyhasbeenconvened from February 5-8 to pass a legislation on the UCC. Sourcessaidthepanelhasalso recommendedthatboysandgirls 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. The UCC will provide a legal framework for a uniform marriage, divorce, land, property and inheritance laws for all citizens irrespective of their religion in the state. If implemented, Uttarakhand will become the first State in the country after Independence to adopt theUCC.Ithasbeenoperational in Goa since the days of the Portuguese rule. The sources said the recommendations also say that everyone will get adoption rights.Even Muslim women will have the rightto adopt and the procedure for adoption will be simplified.

 

They said the practices of halala and iddat will be banned. Also,declarationof live-in relationships will be mandatory,they said, adding it will be a self declaration for which there will be a legal format. The draft has not included population control in its ambit, the sources said, adding ScheduledTribes, which constitute 3 per cent of Uttarakhand’s population, have also been left out of its purview. The report will enter public domain only after it is tabled in the assembly, officials here said. The draft has recommended commongrounds for divorc efor both men and women and putting an end to the practice of child marriage, the sources said. They said all divorces will have to be taken through a court of law and the cooling period for all in such cases will be six months. Custody of children can be given to their grandparents if their parents are locked in a dispute, the sources said, adding the procedure for guardianship of orphaned children will be simplified.