New Delhi: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Sunday backed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and said that it will ‘unite’ the Indians. Addressing the media, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that the implementation of UCC will ‘strengthen’ India and will also develop a sense of brotherhood among people. She, however, targetted the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the way it is ‘forcefully’ trying to implement the reform in the country.
“Our party is not against the implementation of UCC but we do not support the way BJP is trying to implement Uniform Civil Code in the country. It is not right to politicise this issue and forcefully implement UCC in the country,” Mayawati told reporters.
She added that politicising this issue will create problems and that the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre should currently focus on issues like inflation, unemployment, education and healthcare.
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The Uniform Civil Code refers to a common set of laws that are applicable to all the citizens of India and is not based on religion in dealing with marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption among other personal matters.
The debate over UCC was reignited after Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently made a strong push for it, asking how can the country function with dual laws that govern personal matters, and accused the Opposition of using the UCC issue to ‘mislead and provoke’ the Muslim community.
‘Right time’ to bring UCC: BJP
Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Saturday said that this is the ‘right time’ to implement the Uniform Civil Code. “It’s now or never for this law,” he told reporters and asserted that the UCC will ensure ‘equality and justice for all’.
The mood of the nation is to make Uniform Civil Code free from the ‘clutches of communal conspirators’ who held this hostage for the last seven decades for their narrow-minded self-interests, Naqvi alleged.
Slamming the opposition parties, the BJP leader said, “Listening to conscience is the only befitting reply to communal politics over a progressive law like the Uniform Civil Code which will ensure equality and justice for all.”
It is notable that the UCC has been one of the three key poll planks of the BJP for a long time with the other being the abrogation of Article 370 which had given special status to Jammu and Kashmir and the construction of the Ram Mandir in UP’s Ayodhya.
Meanwhile, a parliamentary standing committee has called representatives of the law commission and the law ministry on July 3 on a recent notice issued by the law panel seeking views of stakeholders on the issue of a uniform civil code.
