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Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code: A Step Towards Managing Everyone’s Personal Life
T.K. Rajalakshmi
Uttarakhand has become the first State in the country to bring in a uniform civil code (UCC). But the code, which came into effect on January 27, has drawn sharp criticism for being intrusive and promoting state control in personal relationships, including marriages, divorces, matrimonial disputes, and live-in relationships, as well as in matters of succession and inheritance.
The State Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code Bill in February 2024; it was notified in March 2024 following the President’s assent. On January 20 this year, the State Cabinet approved the Rules for implementing the code.
In a strangely worded provision, the Rules state that the code “will apply to residents of Uttarakhand who reside outside the territories to which these rules extend”. The Rules, which cover marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, matrimonial disputes, registration and termination of live-in relationships, will also apply to cases where one of the partners is a foreign national and the other is from Uttarakhand.
The code leaves the Scheduled Tribes out of its ambit on the grounds that their customary rights are protected under Part XXI of the Constitution. The LGBTQIA+ community is left out from its stipulations regarding marriages and live-in relationships; the code does not address transgender and same-sex marriages.
Other BJP-ruled States such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Assam have expressed their intent to emulate the Uttarakhand UCC template. The day the UCC was rolled out, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami declared that it was a “constitutional measure to end discrimination” and that its implementation would lead to “women’s empowerment in its true sense”. “Through this, evils like halala, polygamy, child marriage, triple talaq, etc., can be completely stopped,” he said.
The Rules provide for the appointment of a Registrar General, not below the level of Secretary, with local registrars and sub-registrars working under him in rural and urban areas to implement the code.
Failure to register marriages and divorces penalised
Marriages and divorces are required to be registered under the UCC, and failure to do so will attract penalties. An application for registration of a marriage will lead to summary inquiries by a registrar; if these are not conducted, the matter will get escalated to the Registrar General’s office. If a registrar rejects an application, the Register General will dispose of the case within 60 days. A similar procedure will apply to live-in relationships.
An application memorandum for registration of a marriage can be rejected if either party has a spouse at the time of marriage; or if either party is incapable of giving consent; or if either party is suffering from mental disorder; or if either party has recurrent attacks of insanity. It can also be rejected if either party is in a live-in relationship and has not terminated the relationship. Couples applying for registration are required to furnish details of the status of previous relationships, including live-in relationships. False statements in the application can invite rejection, and so can the non-furnishing of additional information within a stipulated time limit. In many ways, the UCC incorporates features of the Hindu Marriage Act, making them applicable to all communities irrespective of their religion.
“Prohibited” relationships
The UCC has set out certain “prohibited relationships” wherein marriages cannot be permitted, such as between first cousins. Applications with regard to such relationships can be considered if certified by a religious leader as falling within the accepted customs of a community, but they can still be rejected if deemed to be against public policy and morality.
Marriages conducted before the UCC implementation can be rejected if no ceremony was performed or if the couples have not lived together as spouses since. Appeals can be filed within 30 days after the rejection of applications.
The UCC also provides for a Tatkal Sewa, or Accelerated Service, similar to issuance of passports and railway tickets, wherein a memorandum of registration will be disposed of within three days of receipt. The UCC not only makes registration of marriage mandatory but links it to government benefits and schemes that the married couple can avail themselves of.
Applications for registration can be rejected if the marriage has not been registered under any statute of the government of India or of any State government. Interestingly, there is no Central statute that makes registration of marriages mandatory and stipulates that a marriage will cease to be recognised as one if it is not registered.
Couples whose marriages are registered under the Uttarakhand Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act, 2010 (which stands repealed with the UCC kicking in) are not required to register their marriage again but must file a “declaration of registration of marriage” before a sub-registrar within six months of the commencement of the UCC. Marriages solemnised before the 2010 Act must also be registered under the UCC.
The UCC makes it mandatory for couples seeking a divorce to submit a memorandum or registration of nullity even if such a decree is already awarded by a court or by customary law. Failure to do this will invite a penalty determined by the State government. The sub-registrar may also reject the memorandum for registration of marriage annulment if the registration is sought after the commencement of the UCC in cases where the divorce is granted under customary law and not by a court decree, or if a decree is under appeal.
The registrars at various levels will have the authority to reject applications for registration of a decree of divorce/nullity of marriage even if such a decree has been awarded by a court. The decision to annul a marriage will rest on the “merits” of the case rather than on the choice of the individuals concerned. The UCC is most intrusive in its stipulations for live-in relationships in the way it seeks to enable the state to monitor and police consensual relationships between adults. Where the couples are under 21 years, the parents and local guardians will need to be informed.
The rules of age of marriage and consent, 18 for women and 21 for men, strangely do not apply for live-in relationships where both partners have to be 21 years of age. The lack of “uniformity” here is glaring. Couples planning to enter into a live-in arrangement must apply for registration and live-in couples who wish to separate must apply for termination of the relationship. The registrar must be informed if the woman is pregnant at the time when a couple wishes to terminate a live-in relationship.
The “prohibited relations” category that applies to marriages will apply to live-in relationships too. Section 380 of the UCC lists the various conditions under which a live-in relationship will not be registered. Under Section 385 of the code, the registrar, after receiving an application for registration of a live-in relationship, will share it with the local police station. The parents/guardians of the couple will be informed if they are under 21. The registrar will conduct an inquiry to ascertain the veracity of names, phone numbers, addresses, of the registrants/parents/legal guardian/religious leader/community leaders. Details of previous relationships have to be furnished.
Chapter 5 of the Rules (Subsection 1) of Section 381 of the UCC classifies live-in relationships requiring registration under the code: people who are already in a relationship at the time of the commencement of the code and those who plan to enter one.
Couples who are yet to start living together will be issued a provisional registration certificate after a summary inquiry. This certificate will be valid for 30 days and will be extended by 15 days to allow the couple time to arrange a shared accommodation. After they furnish proof of their new address, a registration certificate will be issued following another inquiry.
Those who fail to inform the registrar after a month of living together will be sentenced by a judicial magistrate to three months’ imprisonment and fined Rs.10,000. Anyone found to have made a false statement to the registrar will be fined Rs.25,000 and given a prison term of up to three months. Failure to register marriages and divorces will also be penalised.
If a sub-registrar receives a complaint or information that a couple has failed to register a marriage or nullity of marriage under the UCC, a notice will be issued requiring a memorandum of registration to be submitted within 30 days. The marriage or its nullity will then be registered and the couples will pay a fee and a fine for not having completed the process earlier. If they fail to respond to the notice, a penalty of Rs.25,000 will be levied.
The UCC has been challenged on various grounds. Petitions have been filed by Muslim organisations as well as other individuals and groups. However, sections of the judiciary seem unconvinced that registering a live-in relationship involves any violation of privacy. While hearing a petition after the UCC came into effect, the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court commented that the petitioner was “living brazenly without marriage” and asked how the state violates privacy when the couple’s live-in relationship is no secret. Interestingly, in the course of hearing another petition, the court said anyone facing penal action under the UCC could approach it. The State government has also issued a warning against false complaints and misuse of the provisions, and the UCC contains penal provisions to guard against misuse.
How “uniform” is the exercise?
Those defending the UCC say that it upholds the spirit of the Directive Principles of State Policy that call upon the state to endeavour to promote people’s welfare throughout the territory of India. However, the “state” referred to in the Directive Principles refers to the Union government. Individual States legislating on a civil code can militate against uniformity. Besides, the UCC has not exactly ensured uniformity by leaving out the Scheduled Tribes from its ambit. The intrusive clauses regarding consensual relationship infantilise adult relationships and cannot be conducive to women’s empowerment, say observers. These clauses also have the potential to be used against interfaith and intercaste couples.
The UCC grants equal rights to property to sons and daughter. However, the All India Democratic Women’s Association has pointed out that by granting property holders the right to will away their entire property, the UCC throws away the gains of the Hindu Succession Act, 2005, which gives an equal share in ancestral property to sons and daughters.
The UCC was supposed to be based on wide-ranging feedback and multiple-level consultations. However, the draft of the almost 200-page UCC dossier was not given proper scrutiny, neither by members in the Assembly nor any State legislature committee, including members from the opposition.
For the BJP, implementing UCC in Uttarakhand is akin to ticking a box. It was also politically expedient to enact it in 2024, with the parliamentary election a few months away. The abrogation of Article 370, building a temple at Ayodhya, introducing a UCC, and the Waqf Amendment Bill are all part of its larger political agenda. Interestingly, neither reform nor the emancipation of women figures in the stated objectives of the UCC. And therein lies the problem.
(T.K. Rajalakshmi is Senior Deputy Editor with Frontline. Courtesy: Frontline, a fortnightly English language magazine published by The Hindu Group of publications headquartered in Chennai, India.)
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Live-in Relationships and the War Against Women’s Agency
Dushyant Arora
If you are a woman who would like the government and courts to protect you from crimes, you will have to purchase one of those GPS tracking ankle bracelets which will constantly relay your movement to the nearest police station, file monthly forms about which areas you travel to, which people you meet and upload an hourly selfie.
This is, of course, for your safety. Don’t you want to be safe? Oh, you want safety and you want the government to exhaust its precious resources in protecting you but you can’t even concede a little “freedom”? Freedom is a western construct and, yes, it is true that the Supreme Court and the Indian Constitution say you should have it but you know there are limits to freedom also; you can’t have absolute freedom.
The aforementioned paragraphs are not completely true yet, but we are close. Allow me to explain.
Two developments took place in India in January 2025 in the context of live-in relationships.
- The ‘rules’ of the Uniform Civil Code passed by the Uttarakhand government – which are not uniform at all but that’s another discussion – came into effect on January 2, 2025.
- In a judgment passed recently, the Rajasthan high court, in the context of a couple in a live-in relationship approaching the court for safety, proceeded to shame and patronise women, and then frame this registration business for live-in relationships as something necessary for the safety of women and their rights. There is also a concern for “children”.
The socio-political-personal context
Before launching into a critique of the Uttarakhand law or the Rajasthan high court judgment, it is critical to point out some facts to remind ourselves of some ground truths to see these with some clarity.
Families in conservative societies, such as India, fundamentally and constantly act to diminish and control women across all stages of their life. What a woman should wear, should she work or not, when and who she should marry, what career choices are permitted etc are common discussions.
This diminishing aspect is largely framed to signify that men are a threat, and that this is a means to protect you – a woman – from that threat. But this is only one part of the story. The second part is more important, and one that many well-meaning people miss when they urge everyone to teach boys/men to do better.
A belief system
There is a near-unanimous belief in conservative societies such as India, one that is disguised in many ways, and something most Indians, including those in power, believe but don’t say explicitly. If they say it, they say it in a way which is deceitful enough to offer plausible deniability.
The belief is that women are inferior to men; they will always be inferior. They are tainted and are at high risk of causing their benefactors shame unless someone takes ownership.
Men, acting through families, courts, legislative assemblies and so on, must own women, keep them in line, prevent them from sinning and causing shame. When they succeed, they are able to psychologically mutilate women also by convincing them that they are bearers of shame, sinful by virtue of their existence – that they are someone who needs to be watched.
Since women are property, the other, the enemy, must not be allowed to steal this property. Who this other is depends on who you are speaking to. However, the other is dehumanised and women are just property – there is no relationship possible here. Love, intimacy, desire, friendship, community? Not applicable.
The other can only loot the property and conquer. This must be avoided at all costs.
These beliefs are regressive, primitive and cruel. They are smartly kept hidden under the veneer of what looks like a functioning society with institutions, malls, etc. It is true that there are pockets in India which are an exception to this rule.
It is also true that there are various manifestations here – in some families, there is no restriction on clothes or work but even that is seen as a concession and not a rightful freedom.
This is not to engage in polemic or hyperbole – these are dull facts of the lived reality of women in India.
Now, with this context in place, let us understand the Uttarakhand UCC and the Rajasthan High Court’s judgment. Let’s start with the law.
UCC: A large-scale medieval surveillance
The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) of Uttarakhand Act, 2024, a law enacted by the Uttarakhand government, makes it mandatory to register live-in relationships from the date of its “commencement” – and makes the failure to do so an offence.
- To register, one has to inform the government about all their previous live-in relationships or marriages, regardless of whether they were registered or not. Basically, they want your dating history.
- If either of the “registrants” is less than 21 years of age, their parents are informed.
- The registration requires a certificate from a priest.
- An application for registration, or for the “termination of live-in” relationship, results in an enquiry from the registrar, who consults religious leaders, local police stations, “community heads” and others. This registrar can also consult his own “sources” without disclosing their identities to the applicants.
- If either of the partners is married to someone else, a live-in relationship cannot be registered.
- In fact, as per Section 378 (1) of the Act, say you are residents of Kerala, in a live-in relationship, visiting Uttarakhand for a friend’s wedding or on a work trip. You are legally obligated to report your relationship to this registrar, or risk prison and/or fine.
The most obvious critique here is that of these requirements being illogical or absurd and that part is self-evident.
When does a live-in relationship “commence”? Is it a live-in relationship if two individuals sharing a flat, who began purely as flatmates but have slept together and share a deep bond, don’t want to give a name to it?
Which young person living in Indian cities even knows who their “community head” is? The provision which makes non-registration an offence, basically converts the entire state – and soon country, with many BJP states mimicking this – into a surveillance squad. This is reminiscent not only of 1930s Germany but also of medieval Church-controlled Europe, with the entire citizenry tasked with the noble duty of reporting sexual/relationship deviance and turning against each other.
This is hell on earth for people in non-married partnerships.
There is also the forbidding of people in marriages entering a live-in relationship. Sometimes couples separate without getting a divorce but stay friends while pursuing other relationships. Sometimes divorces are prolonged and last for years and during this time couples find other companionship.
The government basically wants people in prolonged, contested divorce to not have any other companionship. For what good?
The ‘logic’ behind the law
The “logical” defence is that women in live-in relationships claim maintenance – what about the children from such relationships etc. This is easily countered: various high courts, as well as the Supreme Court have already, in many judgments, decided what has to happen in such cases. Problem solved.
Those judgments understand “choice” and “consent”. They don’t unveil the largest community surveillance in the history of humanity.
They did not launch a large-scale invasion on privacy, demanding that women sit in front of babus and narrate their sexual histories.
No, because that would be a lecherous babu’s fantasy – a permit raj for connection and intimacy.
To argue logic or look for logic is to miss the point. The Uttarakhand law mandates a 16-page form, Aadhaar details and an OTP-linked enquiry.
What is the first thought anyone would have?
It is easier to get married. It really is. As long as you are both from the same religion, at least.
The impulse behind such laws sees anything except a parent, religion and government sanctioned intercourse as sinful and immoral. That is its primary motive.
Rajasthan high court: A defender of the constitution or society?
The Rajasthan high court judgment is peppered with weakly, disguised shaming of live-in relationships with observations like:
“Not a crime or sin though socially unacceptable in our country”
“Does not amount to offence though perceived as immoral”
“Though it is considered immoral by society and not accepted by public at large”
Which society? Which public? Does the public in Meghalaya consider it immoral or unacceptable? What about the public in Goa, Kerala or Tamil Nadu? Is it the case in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or Bengaluru?
Is the definition of ‘society’ the value system espoused by the most regressive collective of people? Do people in courts and legislative assemblies swear by the constitution or by what is considered unacceptable by the public at large?
The Rajasthan high court went on to patronise women unabashedly. It observed:
“…status of women in such relationship is not of wife and lacks social approval or sanctity”
and also,
“…women in such relationships are found to be sufferers”
What is the status of a wife? As the law stands today, a ‘wife’ in India suffers because they cannot prosecute marital rape, even when he kills her in the process but women in live-in relationships can.
As per the National Family Health Survey 5 (2019-21), “Among married women aged 18-49 who have ever experienced sexual violence, 83 per cent report their current husband and 13 per cent report a former husband as perpetrator.”
Whose status is better then, a person able to prosecute sexual violence against them or one who is not able to?
In the eyes of the Uttarakhand government and the Rajasthan high court, women are not adults capable of making choices. Women cannot come to court if there is a child whose rights need to be protected, as the Supreme Court already allows them to.
To remedy this, the Uttarakhand government and the Rajasthan high court want to unleash surveillance and harassment against every unmarried person in the country.
The Rajasthan High Court has called live-in relationships a western idea which India is “slowly opening its door to”. The irony is that the court stating this in response to a couple coming to it seeking police protection fearing threat to their life and liberty.
However, the court says the police are too busy and “dozens” of petitions are being filed.
If someone’s life and liberty were in danger, it is the job of the police and courts to protect it as per the contract a citizen has with the state. The failure of the state and the courts cannot be used as an excuse to uphold rule of law, and to unleash moral policing.
It is unsurprising that the court sees Indian civilisation as static. The courts may do well to understand that policing sexuality and intimacy is also a western concept – one from the medieval ages.
The chief motive
Let us now come to the second, most important, motive behind these laws and judgements.
If a Hindu woman tries to marry a man from another religion, especially Muslim, under the Special Marriage Act, the couple – often just the groom – is violently beaten up.
The families are threatened and often forced to call off the marriage. What choice do those individuals have? Perhaps they could have lived and loved in peace, without marriage. However, that “loophole” must also be closed.
It is already happening: while the government claims that the information is “encrypted”, Bajrang Dal “leaders” claim they have access to the information and are already “checking it”.
Is it surprising that these courts and legislative assemblies haven’t just said that interfaith marriage is banned. It will save so much time, won’t it? However, then the mask would come off.
The masquerade of a functional democracy with the rule of law has its uses. Perhaps, it is time for us Indians to once again echo Varun Grover and say “Hum kaagaz nahin dikhayenge” (We won’t show you our papers).
(Dushyant Arora is a lawyer and research consultant based in Mumbai. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.)
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‘We Owe Nothing to the State’: Why This Live-In Couple is Taking on Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code
Ayush Tiwari
Just weeks before the Uttarakhand government tabled a bill to introduce a uniform civil code in the state in January 2024, a couple in a live-in relationship moved to Haldwani from Delhi.
A little over a year later, they find themselves in the first legal battle of their lives. Last month, they moved the Uttarakhand High Court against the Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024 – one among a slew of challenges that the law faces in court.
A Uniform Civil Code is a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all Indians, regardless of their religious or tribal identities. But the UCC passed by Uttarakhand’s Bharatiya Janata Party government does not extend to tribal groups and imports heavily from Hindu laws.
Most crucially for the couple, it heavily intrudes into live-in relationships.
For instance, the law makes it mandatory for couples in a live-in relationship to register with state officials, who have been vested with the power to approve such relationships. Failing register invites a jail term of up to three months or a fine up to Rs 10,000 or both.
The couple has demanded that the entire section on live-in relationships in the UCC be declared unconstitutional and in violation of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution that guarantee equality before law, fundamental freedoms, and the right to life and personal liberty. They said they rejected the heteronormative assumptions of a live-in relationship written into the law.
“Even before I had decided to file this petition, I knew I would not register my live-in relationship,” the man told Scroll. “It is a protest against the state, especially the surge of Hindutva in India and in Uttarakhand over the last decade.”
Keen not to draw attention towards themselves, the petitioners spoke to Scroll on the condition of anonymity.
The risk of eviction
The couple – both 29 years old – live in a rented home in Haldwani. “We realised that we are doomed if we move court, and we are doomed if we don’t,” said the woman, who identifies as a queer person.
As a part of the registration process, the Uttarakhand UCC demands that the couple share the full name and contact number of their landlord and a copy of the rent agreement with the registrar, who will contact the landlord to verify the submitted information.
Landlords must also demand a registration certificate before renting the property to a live-in couple.
This, the petition argues, will make it “very difficult for the live-in couple to secure adequate housing” – an unconstitutional measure since “personal relationships are central to and belong in the realm of choice, not in the corridors of bureaucracy”.
“If we don’t challenge the law, and instead go to the registrar to register our relationship, we would be thrown out of this rented house,” said the woman, who is apprehensive that their conservative Hindu neighbours, already hostile to their relationship, may then pressure the landlord to evict them.
A protest against the state
Both petitioners are independent researchers – the woman is from Delhi and the man from Haldwani in Uttarakhand. They started living together in Delhi after they met at Ambedkar University as students of sociology and law.
The woman’s parents accept their live-in union, unlike the man’s brother – the only member of his family after his parents died in 2021. So when they moved to Haldwani in early 2024, they were forced to find a rented accommodation, even though the man and his family own a house in the town.
The couple’s legal challenge against the UCC is coloured by their disillusionment with the Indian state.
In September 2023, the woman was physically attacked in the National Capital Region by a friend of the man, leaving her with third-degree burns. “The police did not file an FIR and said that it was my partner who had burnt me,” she recounted. “I broke down several times while trying to lodge my complaint. His brother also threatened me.”
The petitioner’s experience with failing to file an FIR against her attacker makes her wary of the uniform civil code’s insistence that the local police should be informed about the registration and termination of live-in unions in the state.
The other petitioner’s response, he said, is influenced by his parents’ death because of Covid in 2021. “There is this bitterness I have with the state since then. It began with their decision to organise the Kumbh Mela in the middle of the pandemic,” he said. “So many died, including my parents. And the government faced no accountability for it. I owed responsibility and accountability to my parents, but I don’t owe anything to the state. That is why this is a personal battle.”
Coming out in court
The woman petitioner told Scroll that she had to disclose her gender identity for the first time to mount a legal challenge against the UCC.
“The female petitioner self-identifies as queer,” says the petition.
The petitioners argued that the code defines “live-in relationship” as a “relationship between a man and a woman”, which is a “heteronormative framework”. As a result, it compels the woman “to affirm to a heterosexual identity”.
“The UCC does not recognise people beyond the binary of a man and a woman,” said the woman. “They don’t see how a queer couple would fit into their patriarchal notion of a family.”
The petition argues that this purported outlook of the UCC discriminates against the woman’s queer identity and disregards the constitutional guarantees of “the right to self-determination, dignity, and equality”.
It is the rejection of a traditional family setup that pushed the duo to choose a live-in relationship over a marriage. The plea says that their “lived experiences with unhappy marriages and domestic violence in their natal families have reinforced their belief in choosing a relationship based on mutual respect and autonomy rather than conforming to institutionalized structures”,
“I feel like there is masculine coercion [in this law],” the woman added. “UCC in its entirety is a majoritarian project – it forces certain values on an entire society.”
A long fight
Petitions can drag on for years in Indian courts, sucking time, energy and resources out of the petitioners.
The man pointed out that the legal challenge will also serve the couple’s academic interests – as researchers interested in anthropology, it would give them an opportunity to observe court proceedings first hand.
But both of them know that they have signed for something much more serious. Uttarakhand has a history of vigilante groups crudely interfering in the lives of couples, especially if they are intercaste or interfaith. Even a petition on sensitive matters like live-in relationships could attract their attention. “We will face the brunt of this law, so we might as well fight it,” the woman said.
She added that she has worked as a researcher on terror trials with people booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. “Some of those people spend 15-20 years in jail and their cases go on and on,” the woman said. “I have also lived with a disability after the [September 2023] attack. If this is a long battle, then I don’t know what is not.”
During the first hearing of the petition on February 27, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Uttarakhand high court that the UCC’s objective was to protect women.
But the couple’s advocate, Vrinda Grover, argued that underneath this lofty objective, the code’s provisions on drawing in parents and the police into the registration process will open up women to “familial intimidation and social coercion”.
The bench of Justices Manoj Tiwari and Ashish Naithani questioned Grover about why registration was a problem, since “for the larger good, you have to compromise on some rights”. They added that a child born out of a live-in union will not be treated as illegitimate and the UCC was an attempt to keep pace with a changing society.
The court asked the state to file a reply to the petition on April 1. So far, ten live-in relationships have been registered in the hill state.
(Courtesy: Scroll.in, an Indian digital news publication, whose English edition is edited by Naresh Fernandes.)
