Scrap all community-based laws before bringing in UCC, says Nitish Kumar's Bihar government

NEW DELHI: Cautioning the Law Commission of India not to hasten the implementation of Uniform Civil Code (UCC), Bihar government has suggested that “all such community laws and specific community based concepts will have to be scrapped before a UCC is brought in”. “No consultation with all stakeholders, including state governments has been done at all about the feasibility to repeal all such various laws before the concept of UCC is implemented,” Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has written to the chairperson of Law Commission Justice B S Chauhan.

The letter is in response to the questionnaire sent by Law Commission to Bihar government seeking its (Bihar’s) opinion on different points on the UCC. However, Bihar has virtually refused to give its suggestions on the questionnaires.

“The questionnaire enclosed with the letter has been examined carefully. It seems that the questions have been framed in such a manner so as to force the respondent to reply in a specific way. These are leading questions with limited number of choices given as probable answers and thus, denying the respondent enough scope to frame his own independent replies. Therefore it is not possible to send a reply from the state government,” CM wrote to the Commission.