Uniformity or Uniformisation? A Critical Examination of the Gujarat Uniform Civil Code, 2026

*Sandhyashree Karanth

Introduction

On the 24th of March, 2026, Gujarat became the second state in India to introduce the Uniform Civil Code, following Uttarakhand’s UCC in the year 2024. This is arguably the delayed implementation of Article 44 of the Indian Constitution pertaining to Directive Principles. However, the UCC is incomplete in the sense that the underlying spirit of Article 44 is silent about the process of uniformity, the competent authority to frame the UCC, the procedure, and the legitimacy of the UCC. This post argues that the UCC legislation is the conflation of the concept of uniformity with the process of uniformisation.

The Competence Problem: Article 254 and the Limits of State-Level UCCs

The basis for the government of Gujarat’s legislation of the UCC is Entry 5 of List III of the Seventh Schedule, which places marriage, divorce, and succession in the Concurrent List. The competence of the states to legislate on these subjects, therefore, cannot be questioned. The issue, therefore, is one of repugnancy. With the passing of Gujarat UCC any existing law, custom, or usage which is inconsistent with the UCC would cease to have effect. This would, without any explicit parliamentary sanction, negate a number of central laws, namely, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the Indian Succession Act, 1925. Article 254(1) of the Constitution states that where a state legislation is repugnant to a central legislation on any subject in the Concurrent List, the central legislation would prevail to the extent of the repugnancy. The only way in which the government of Gujarat could have negated the central laws would have been by obtaining presidential assent, which does not seem to have been done.

This is not a technical argument. It is a fundamental argument that goes to the very heart of India's federal structure. The very issue of whether personal laws are even subject to Part III of the Constitution is a matter of debate, and the Delhi High Court in the famous case of Harvinder Kaur v. Harmandar Singh resisted the introduction of constitutional principles into personal laws, describing it as like 'introducing a bull in a china shop'. The Supreme Court has always merely recommended the enactment of the UCC and not ordered it, realizing, as it did in Pannalal Bansilal v. State of Andhra Pradesh, that "uniform law, though high desirable, enactment thereof in on go perhaps may be counter-productive to unity and integrity of the nation.". A state government, outpacing Parliament in this area, passed the measure without proper scrutiny and despite opposition demands for deliberation. This does not appear to conform to that spirit.

The Neutrality Illusion: Whose Norms Become the Universal Standard?

If the previous concern was about who has the authority to enact a Uniform Civil Code, the present one is more fundamental: what exactly is being made uniform, and whose norms are being universalised in the process. The Gujarat UCC is claimed to be community-neutral. This assertion must be analyzed. While the provisions relating to marriage, divorce, and succession draw most heavily on the existing codified personal law applicable to the Hindu community, the key distinction between uniform and common law that is emphasized in the paper is immediately relevant in the context of the Gujarat UCC. S.P. Sathe’s interpretation of Article 44 of the Constitution is that the requirement of uniformity is met if all personal laws are subject to the same principles of social and gender justice, but the Gujarat UCC rules out this interpretation by replacing one code with another.

The tribal exemption highlights this structural imbalance. The Gujarat UCC excludes Scheduled Tribes from the scope of the law, in conformity with the constitutional protection provided under Article 342 of the Indian Constitution and the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. This exemption may be justified in itself, but it weakens the claim of uniformity that the law is built on. If uniformity is truly the goal, and the state claims the power to override personal laws in the name of equality, then this selective exemption becomes difficult to explain. The same reasoning used to protect tribal customary law is also used by religious minorities to defend their own personal laws. By accepting one and rejecting the other, Gujarat suggests that uniformity is not the real goal. Instead, it begins to look like a matter of preferring the laws of one community over those of another.

This exclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community only adds to this. The Gujarat UCC, like the Uttarakhand UCC, confines live-in relationships and marriage to heterosexual couples only. This is not a gap, but a positive action of exclusion that the legislation need not have taken. In light of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India and the cohabitation rights that are inherent in Supriyo v. Union of India , the Gujarat UCC’s failure to deal with queer families is not neutral from a constitutional perspective. It merely entrenches the invisibility of queer families within the new uniform regime. A code that moves away from a multitude of personal laws but follows a general exclusion does not create uniformity, it standardizes discrimination.

Compulsory Registration, Privacy, and the Proportionality Deficit

Of the Gujarat UCC’s mandatory registration provisions, those relating to marriages and live-in relationships are the most susceptible to a challenge on constitutional grounds, specifically Article 21. The nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India held that any state action that invades individual privacy would need to meet a three-part test of proportionality. The state action would need to be sanctioned by law, have a legitimate aim, and be proportionate, i.e., the least restrictive means of achieving the legitimate aim. The mandatory registration of live-in relationships, coupled with criminal sanctions of up to three months of imprisonment or a fine of Rs.10,000 for non-compliance, fails the test of proportionality. The legitimate state aim of protecting women in live-in relationships and ensuring the right to claim maintenance could have been met by the state through less invasive measures, such as the creation of presumptions of relationship status from evidence of cohabitation.

The surveillance element of this system is conceptually distinct from the privacy objection. The Gujarat UCC, following the Uttarakhand model, mandates sharing of live-in particulars with local law enforcement. It fundamentally transforms the district registrar’s office into a point of surveillance. Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. upheld the right of adults to make adult choices in matters of intimacy in the absence of state or familial interference. This is a right that is firmly situated in Article 21’s guarantee of liberty. The mandatory intimation of parents in cases where couples are in the 18-21 age group is structurally antithetical to this. It arms parents, in worst-case scenarios even khap panchayats, with state-generated data on adult intimate choices. The impact on interfaith or intercaste couples is structurally predictable and legally cognizable. In Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court acknowledged that adult couples entering inter-caste marriages often face threats, harassment, and even violence from their own families. In this legal context, any state-mandated disclosure of intimate relationship details to parents creates a real and immediate risk of coercion, surveillance, and harm for such couples.

Another internal contradiction that may be highlighted is that, whereas criminal consequences are prescribed for unregistered live-in relationships, non-registration of marriages, as provided for in the very same legislation, does not invite any such consequence. In this way, the very hierarchy of recognition that this legislation sets out to establish appears to be turned on its head, as the more “formal” of the two relationships (marriage) appears to be treated more liberally than the less “formal” of the two (live-in relationships). No logical rationale for this apparent distinction appears to be provided in the legislative text, and this appears to be a punitive approach to cohabitation as a practice, which does not sit well with the equality guarantee of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.

Conclusion

The Gujarat UCC reveals three distinct but connected failures in legal craftsmanship. From a constitutional point of view, it invokes state competence in List III but fails to comply with repugnancy requirements in Article 254, which could be fatal in any court. From a substantive viewpoint, it confuses form (a code) with content (equality in principles), creating a code that replaces minority personal law but excludes tribal law and queer families. From the viewpoint of its registration provisions, it uses the protective role of the state to build a surveillance state, which cannot be tested for proportionality in Puttaswamy. None of these is an argument against uniform civil law in principle. What is in dispute is the manner in which it is done. In reliance upon the Court’s reasoning in Pannalal Bansilal, uniform law enacted “in one go” is counter-productive and requires deliberation, community engagement, and incrementalism. If the UCC is to be an instrument of emancipation, and not of majoritarian consolidation, then its manner of making is as important as its substance.

*The Author is a third- year law student pursuing B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) at RV University.

The views expressed above are the author's alone and do not represent the beliefs of Family Law Chronicle: The CFL Blog.