Bengal’s first BJP government might introduce a uniform civil code bill in the Assembly by Monday alongside another enabling a sweeping crackdown on crime, sources said.
While the UCC bill will seek to end polygamy and child marriage and impose uniformity on inheritance rights, the anti-crime bill will allow long-term preventive detention and confiscation of suspects’ properties, provisions that can also be used to stifle political dissent, the sources said.
The Opposition is likely to argue that both legislations can be misused to target religious minorities.
A uniform civil code remains the BJP’s lone unfulfilled “core issue” following the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah had promised a UCC in Bengal during the recent poll campaign.
Multiple sources said the state’s law department spent Wednesday and Thursday working on the drafts of both the bills to secure speedy sanction from chief minister Suvendu Adhikari.
“The government’s floor managers are already clearing the decks for both bills to move to a vote with minimal fuss. It will be a clinical, precision strike,” a source said. “The UCC is happening… unless there is a last-minute need to press the
pause button on it until the next session.”
Sources said the UCC draft replicates an Assam legislation by enforcing statutory gender parity in matters of ancestral property, outlawing polygamy entirely, and introducing a legal shield against child marriage by invalidating underage unions regardless of customary religious sanctions.
It also stipulates the registration of live-in relationships with local district magistrates, with prison terms for non-compliance, the sources added.