Uttarakhand Governor returns UCC and religious conversion amendment Bills

Falling foul of the Pushkar Singh Dhami-led Uttarakhand government, Lt. Governor Gurmit Singh (retd.) returned the amendment bills related to the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the State’s Freedom of Religion and Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion Act, citing technical flaws.

Sources in the government confirmed that the Governorship returned the bills.

“The governor raised issues regarding the penalty period for several crimes in the new laws, as well as some grammatical and technical errors,” said an official involved in drafting the bill. Hindu.

He added that since the bills are now coming back from the Governor’s Office, they will need to be redesigned to fix the errors pointed out and eliminate other technical glitches.

“In this case, the government will be left with two options: either to accept the changes by introducing a regulation, or to pass them again in the State Assembly and send them for the Governor’s consideration,” the official said.

Both the religious conversion and the UCC Bills were among the most ambitious legislation introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Pushkar Singh Dhami government and were widely opposed by the Congress and civil rights groups, who called them an attack on the minority community.

The UCC was passed in January 2024 and the government introduced an amendment to the legislation during the monsoon session of the State Assembly in August this year. Among various changes, the government increased the penalty to up to seven years for those living in the same household even after marrying someone else. Similar punishment was offered to those who had sex by force, pressure or fraud. A new addition, Section 390-A, empowered the Registrar General to cancel registrations relating to marriage, divorce, cohabiting relationships or inheritance under Chapter 12.

The state already had an anti-conversion law passed in 2018, but the government amended it in 2022 and again in 2025. This time, prison sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment were proposed for people found guilty of “forced conversion.” Previously, the maximum prison sentence for the crime of “forced religious conversion” was 10 years.

Although the state government claimed that the Governorship returned the bills due to minor errors, the Congress termed this move as a tactic to keep the issues alive in the public memory ahead of the Assembly elections to be held in 2027.

“If these were just minor flaws, the Governor’s office could have unofficially sent them back for corrections. Sending them a message is enough to establish that he is not completely happy with the legislation or it is just a tactic of the government to recall the bills and pass them to Parliament around the elections in early 2027 because the BJP has already used all its divisive tactics to win the elections and now there is nothing new left.” and Uttarakhand Congress vice-president Suryakant Dhasmana said.