Amit Shah Says The BJP Will Take Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code To Every State It Governs
India’s home minister said on Friday that his party would introduce a uniform civil code in every state it governs, telling a crowd in Uttarakhand that 15 states had moved towards one since the Himalayan state became the first to enforce it
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| Image Via: PIB India |
A uniform civil code replaces religion-specific personal laws on marriage, divorce and inheritance with a single statute. Uttarakhand brought one into force in January 2025, the first Indian state to legislate its own; Goa retains a civil code inherited from Portuguese rule. Under it, Shah said, no one in the state can take multiple spouses and no woman can be subjected to instant divorce.
He also set a target for elections due in 2027, asking for 50 per cent of the vote and more than 60 of the assembly’s 70 seats. That would exceed anything the party has achieved there: it won 57 seats on 46.5 per cent of the vote in 2017 and 47 seats on 44.3 per cent in 2022, the first time any party in the state had been re-elected.
Turning to the revision of electoral rolls that has brought opposition supporters onto the streets since late September, Shah said the opposition leader’s campaign was not a march to save votes but a “Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatra” — a march to save infiltrators — and asked the audience whether the rolls should be cleared of them. He accused opposition parties of appeasement and of having permitted infiltration, and the previous state government of corruption.
Shah said Uttarakhand’s economic output had grown 50 per cent since 2022 and income per head by 40 per cent, that tourism had risen 380 per cent, and that an investment summit had drawn pledges of 3.56 trillion rupees, of which projects worth a trillion were operating. He gave no sources for the figures.
He also said an anti-conversion law had made religious conversion impossible in the state, and inaugurated or laid foundations for 63 projects worth about 15 billion rupees.