Constitutionality of Proposed Assam’s Uniform Civil Code

As a student of law perpetually ingrained in our legal profession, there is something unsettling to comment about a law that announces itself through press conferences rather than a published legislative draft. 

The Assam Uniform Civil Code (UCC), 2026 so far exists only in fragments from the Chief Minister’s statements, with the bill expected to be tabled in the State Assembly on 26 May 2026.  

It is too thin basis for constitutional scrutiny but extracting from the excerpts of statement, we need to use our constitutional lens cautiously. Those who favour the UCC legislation may argue that Article 44 mandates the State to “endeavour” toward a uniform civil code, that India’s fragmented identity-based personal laws governing marriage, succession and adoption produce prolonged and inconsistent judicial outcomes, and that codification would introduce a streamlined regulatory environment reducing the burden on an already strained judiciary. 

The Concurrent List Problem

Personal law falls under Entry 5 of the Concurrent List, giving both Parliament and State legislatures the authority to legislate on it. Uttarakhand, a small state, has taken the lead by experimenting with a model framework. Gujarat followed suit, and now Assam is preparing to join. Goa’s the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 is often cited as precedent, but its code is a colonial legacy preserved by historical continuity, not a contemporary reform. A code imposed externally without meaningful consultation with the public or stakeholders, lacks that organic legitimacy. Moreover, when each state enacts its own version, State level codes differing from each other cannot be called “uniform.” True uniformity must come from Parliament not individual States.

The Tribal Women Exclusion: A Silence That Condemns

The key issue in the proposed law is not what it includes but what it leaves out deliberately. Tribal communities in the Northeast India have constitutionally protected customary tribal laws under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules. Their exclusion from the Code may be politically and legally understandable, but it raises serious constitutional concerns on equality, as it places tribal women on a different footing than a non tribal women.

Tribal governance in the North East India has been widely reported as male dominated, and denial of women’s rights under custom is widespread. If the aim was genuine protection to gender justice, tribal women should have been the starting point. Assam, as the leading state of the Northeast, had the chance to pioneer legislation on tribal women’s rights.
 

Article 44 versus the Hierarchy of Rights

The Supreme Court in Shah Bano, in Sarla Mudgal, and most pointedly in John Vallamattom, where Chief Justice Khare expressed regret that Parliament had not yet acted on Article 44, has repeatedly urged legislative initiative. But a Directive Principle of State Policy, however worthy in aspiration, operates within not above the Constitution’s fundamental rights architecture. Articles 25 and 26 guarantee every person the freedom to profess and practise religion and every religious denomination the right to manage its own affairs in matters of religion. The essential religious practices doctrine places those practices integral to a faith beyond ordinary legislative reach. Thus, while Article 44 embodies a constitutional desideratum, its claim to supremacy over fundamental rights is a constitutional fiction. 

The Divine Law Dimension

Islam, as originally conceived in seventh century Arabia, was itself a profound reformist intervention, it dismantled an entrenched patriarchal order, abolished unrestricted polygamy, polyandry and female infanticide, established women’s rights to hold property, consent to marriage, and seek dissolution of an unhappy union. The Quran declared husbands and wives raiment unto each other, a declaration of mutual dignity. For Muslims in India, the laws of inheritance— Ilm Al Faraid — are not convention or evolved custom. They are Quranic ordinance: specific shares for the daughter, the widow, the mother, the son, prescribed in verse, not by clerical opinion. When a legislature proposes to override Quranic inheritance prescriptions by statute, it performs something constitutionally distinct from what Hindu law codification achieved between 1955 and 1956. It is substituting legislative preference for what believers hold to be divine command which constitute an infraction of an essential religious practice question.

The Failure Within Muslim community and What It Demands

The Quranic inheritance system is precise in text, but routinely violated not by the State, but by Muslim themselves. Widows and Orphans are systematically disentitled from their deceased’s share. Educated Muslim who invoke religious law to defend, choose and pick verses which is convenient for them but maintain a studied silence on gender justice. In Islamic jurisprudence, polygamy is permitted but strictly conditioned. The Qur’an (Surah Nisa, 4:3) allows up to four wives only if a man can deal with them equally and justly. The verse itself warns: “But if you fear that you cannot deal justly, then marry only one.” Inspecting whether those conditions are met falls to family courts and, in principle, to community institutions, though enforcement in practice is often weak which results to the subjugation of Muslim women’s right. And the inequity in Muslim divorce law demands separate, targeted address: a Muslim husband dissolves marriage instantly without judicial process; maintenance not granted to divorced wife after completing the Iddat period and such controversial issues often inadequately addressed by the Waqf board and exact codification of the Quranic verses are not incorporated in the existing Muslim Personal Law enactments.

In the heat of debate for and against UCC, we forgotten that there is already an optional uniform code existing in the form of the Special Marriage Act 1954 and the Indian Succession Act 1925. Any Indian can get his/her marriage under the Special Marriage Act 1954 and Section  21 of the Act prescribes that, upon  such registration, the parties will be governed by the Indian Succession Act  and not their personal law. The problem is not the absence of a secular framework, but the social coercion that prevents especially women from using it. Family courts remain in poor condition. Strengthening those existing institutions, funding legal aid, and empowering women through education and economic independence would achieve far more for gender justice than declaratory legislation.