Rising Bharat 2024: UCC Not BJP Agenda but Promise to India that Religions will be Ruled by One Law: Amit Shah – News18

Uniform Civil Code is the BJP government’s promise to India that all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Parsis should be ruled under one law, stressed Union home minister Amit Shah at the CNN-News18’s Rising Bharat Summit 2024 in New Delhi on Wednesday.

There will be no interference in religion and religious practices of these sects, but a common law will govern them, as had been decided by the makers of the Constitution, Shah pointed out. “This (UCC) is not BJP’s agenda,” he added.

The Union home minister explained that the BJP accepted the UCC as the “guiding principle”, which BR Ambedkar, Sardar Patel, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Rajendra Prasad too believed in. They decided that the UCC should be implemented in the country during the right time, and the BJP government in Uttarakhand did it.

Shah said the Uttarakhand government under Pushkar Singh Dhami has brought out the UCC, which will undergo political, judicial and social scrutiny.

“We believe that in a diversified country like India, there should be one rule of law,” he said.

When News18 told Shah that the DMK, which is part of the INDIA alliance, has said it will repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and UCC when it will come to power, Shah quipped that “won’t happen”.

On Opposition parties’ counter that the Muslims of India have the right to live as per the Sharia law, Shah said such practices have already been abandoned even by the Islamic countries. He said the Muslims of India have not been living under the Sharia law since 1937. “This is Congress’ appeasement policy,” he added.

“Pelting stones on rapists to death, chopping the hands off thieves, hanging anti-nationals, does the Opposition want this to happen?” Shah questioned.

Uttarakhand has become the first state after Independence to adopt the UCC. Goa has been implementing it since the time of Portuguese rule. The UCC will be applicable to all religious communities in India on matters of marriage, inheritance, divorce, adoption, maintenance and others. Practices such as Halala, Iddat and Triple Talaq under Muslim personal law will be punishable offences under UCC. However, the Code exempts tribal communities from its purview.