Law Ministry used Shah Bano case to justify itself before PMO

NEW DELHI: The law ministry has leaned on the controversial Shah Bano case to justify its decision before the Prime Minister’s Office to refer the matter of implementing a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the country to the Law Commission.

This was a part of the detailed three-page note that the law ministry had submitted to the PMO on July 1, the day when it first became public that the issue was referred to the Law Commission. The reference was sent on June 17 by the law ministry.

ET was the first to report this move on July 1, resulting in a spate of queries within the government, conveying the impression that the PMO was not in the loop earlier. Four days later, then law minister DV Sadananda Gowda lost his portfolio in the July 5 Cabinet reshuffle.

The detailed note was sent in response to a “verbal query” from the PMO on July 1 after it became public that the ministry had asked the Law Commission to “examine” the UCC issue, said an official on condition of anonymity.

The note covered broadly three aspects — Supreme Court rulings on implementing UCC; the court’s repeated questioning of the government’s stand on the issue in pending matters before the court; and prudence of ensuring larger public participation and seeking a consensus before taking a stance.

Among the two SC judgments prominently cited to make law ministry’s case is Mohammed Ahmed Khan versus Shah Bano Begum, the controversial maintenance law suit which made Uniform Civil Code a flashpoint in Indian politics in 1985.

The apex court had held that Bano, a Muslim woman, should get alimony from her former spouse, and in the context of that judgment stated that Uniform Civil Code should apply to personal law. The Rajiv Gandhi government controversially piloted a law in Parliament to overturn the Supreme Court ruling.

The note also cited the landmark 1995 Supreme Court order in the Sarla Mudgal versus Union of India case. The court through that order had laid down principles against the practice of solemnising second marriage by conversion to Islam without dissolution of the first marriage.

The ruling covered issues of bigamy, the conflict between the personal laws existing on matters of marriage and invoked Article 44 of the Directive Principles of State Policy, as enshrined in the Constitution, which sets implementation of Uniform Civil Code as the “duty of the State”.

Days after the Commission put out a questionnaire seeking public comments on the issue of Uniform Civil Code, the Muslim Personal Law Board last week called for a boycott of the questionnaire.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley and urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu, among others in the Modi government, appealed to the board and the Muslim community not to politicise the matter.