A state government-appointed panel to prepare a draft of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) on Friday submitted the document to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami here.

The draft was handed over to the chief minister by the five-member committee headed by retired Supreme Court Judge Ranjana Prakash Desai.

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 the UCC. It has been operational in Goa since the days of the Portugese rule.

A special four-day session of the Uttarakhand Assembly has already been convened from February 5-8 to pass a legislation on the UCC.

The draft will be discussed in a meeting of the state Cabinet before it is tabled in the form of a Bill in the Assembly. The panel was constituted in May, 2022 to prepare a draft of the UCC. Constituted for six months initially, it was given four extensions to look into all aspects before finalising its report.

It received 2.33 lakh written suggestions and held 60 meetings in which the members interacted with around 60,000 people in the course of preparing the draft.

Passing a legislation on the UCC will fulfil a major promise made by the BJP to the people of the state 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.

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