The Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response on a PIL seeking uniform adoption and guardianship laws after recently entertaining a PIL that sought uniform legal provisions for divorce, maintenance, and alimony, thus bring up the issue of the Uniform Civil code.
The petition was filed by Ashwini Upadhyay who was also a petitioner on uniform laws on divorce. A bench comprising of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices V Ramasubramanian and A S Bopanna sought a response on the PIL from the Union Ministries of home, law, women, and child development. The two issues form the core of UCC and thus the bench tagged the hearing of both issues along.
The same bench on December 16, entertained two PILs seeking uniform divorce laws and uniformity in the grant of maintenance and alimony to women. The CJI bench feared that this would cause a lot of displeasure among the religious communities as they have been following uniform personal laws for decades.
The court had asked the council if they wanted all the personnel laws to be abolished. They questioned the council as to how the court can remove discriminatory practices against women without encroaching into the personal laws of religious communities.
However, in response to this, the petitioner pointed out that the court had already done this before in the Muslim community by declaring instant divorce through triple talaq as unconstitutional.
Senior advocate Pinky Anand and Meenakshi Arora were also involved along with Advocate Upadhyay for the PIL on uniform divorce, maintenance, and alimony. Senior advocates Anjana Prakash and Geeta Luthra were on the PIL of uniform adoption and guardianship.
The petitioner contended that if observed carefully the SC has always been nudging the Centre for UCC. SC had said in the Shah Bano case of 1985 that a common civil code will help cause national integration.
In the Sarla Mudgal Case that came 10 years later, the SC said that almost 80% of the citizens have been following codified civil laws thus the introduction of a uniform civil code must not be delayed.
Yet again the court expressed its desire to attain Article 44 of the constitution in 2003 in the John Vallamattom case. This happened even on September 13, 2019, in Paulo Coutinho’s case.
The bench sought response from the Union ministries of home, law, women, and child welfare on this petition.
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