Opposition MPs question 'intent' of UCC

As the Ministry of Law and Justice is “waiting” for the Law Commission report to move forward with its process on Uniform Civil Code (UCC), a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Monday saw Opposition MPs questioning the "intent" of the government on the issue even as panel head queried whether tribals could be exempted from it.

The meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Pension, Law and Justice also saw Opposition MPs asking why the Commission was reopening the exercise though it had five years ago expressed its views describing it as “undesirable and unnecessary”.

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Sources said committee chairperson Sushil Kumar Modi, a ruling BJP MP, raised a query to the Ministry officials whether the predominantly tribal inhabited north-eastern states, which has special status under Article 371, could be exempted from "Common Civil Code", sources said.

It was not clear whether his party was thinking on these lines even as sources said Modi told the meeting that Opposition parties generally have not openly opposed the UCC and they were waiting for the draft to come so that they could comment. The committee is also to continue deliberations on the UCC and invite comments from other stakeholders, they said.

The Ministry officials also told the panel that the government would wait for the Law Commission to complete its consultation and submit its report before moving forward on the UCC.

In the meeting called to hear the views of the Ministry and Law Commission on UCC, sources said Opposition MPs sought to link the push for UCC to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as they questioned the intent of the government.

Sources said nominated MP Mahesh Jethmalani referred to BR Ambedkar's speech supporting the UCC in the Constituent Assembly.

However, sources said, senior Congress MP Manickam Tagore countered him, saying Ambedkar's intention was not questionable when he supported an UCC but that is not the case with the Modi government's "intent". Tagore also referred to the anti-tribal, anti-northeast and anti-oppressed nature of the UCC while linking the exercise to 2024 elections, they said.

TRS MP K Suresh Reddy too asked about the previous Law Commission's consultation paper and how many recommendations were implemented by the government while BSP MP Malook Nagar questioned the haste in implementing UCC but targeted the Opposition too for making it an issue, sources said.

Congress MP Vivek Tankha and DMK MP P Wilson submitted separate notes to the committee, questioning the Law Commission's move to invite comments on UCC for the second time. In his presentation before the panel, Law Commission Member Secretary Khetrabasi Biswal said that they have so far received 19.12 lakh responses from the public in response to its public notice on June 14.

In his note, sources said, Tankha supported the views of the previous Law Commission's position that it is essential to deal with laws that are discriminatory rather than providing UCC, which is neither necessary nor desirable at this stage. The Commission had insisted that the best way forward in the absence of any consensus on UCC is to preserve diversity of personal laws while ensuring that it does not contradict fundamental rights.

While opposing the UCC, Wilson said in his letter that the reopening of the issue by the present Law Commission is "strange" and all that needs to be done is to finalise its report based on the consultation paper published by the previous Law Commission.

When a number of MPs referred to the previous Commission's view that UCC is "neither desirable nor necessary at this stage", sources said, Modi recalled that the consultation paper was 185 pages long but people are referring to only one line in it.