India, July 22 -- The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Tuesday passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill, 2026 by voice vote a noisy protest by the opposition Congress MLAs. The Bill, which will make Madhya Pradesh the fourth state after Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam to enact a Uniform Civil Code, seeks to establish a common legal framework governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and live-in relationships. It exempts members of the state's Scheduled Tribes from its ambit. Piloting the legislation, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav described the occasion as a "golden moment" in the Assembly's history and said the law would ensure "equality for all and respect for all." He accused the Congress of opposing the Bill for "appeasement politics" and alleged that the party had consistently denied justice to women.
The legislation prohibits polygamy, mandates the registration of marriages, divorces and live-in relationships, and provides equal inheritance rights to biological and adopted children, irrespective of whether they are born to married or unmarried parents. It also renders unilateral verbal divorce, including triple talaq, illegal under the state's legal framework. Highlighting the Bill's provisions, Yadav said the minimum legal age for marriage would remain 18 years for women and 21 years for men, and only individuals legally divorced would be permitted to enter another marriage. He said failure to register a live-in relationship or entering one by concealing an existing marriage would attract penal provisions, including imprisonment of up to five years in specified cases.
The Chief Minister claimed that a majority of Muslim women and a significant section of Muslim men who deposed before the committee that drafted the Bill had supported the Uniform Civil Code. He credited the Narendra Modi government with abolishing triple talaq and said the state law would ensure that all citizens are governed by the same civil laws. During his speech, Yadav also targeted the Congress over the exclusion of Scheduled Tribes from the legislation, accusing the Opposition of being "anti-tribal." Amid slogan-shouting in the House, he asserted that the UCC would benefit all 8.5 crore residents of the state. At the outset, senior Congress MLA Arif Masood said that the Bill contained numerous inconsistencies. The Union government had failed to implement the UCC through Parliament despite the relevant bill remaining pending with the Law Commission for three years, he said. Amid the uproar, Speaker Narendra Singh Tomar passed the Bill by voice vote after the Chief Minister's reply.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.