THE UTTARAKHAND UNIFORM CIVIL CODE ACT, 2024: A SCALABLE NATIONAL BLUEPRINT OR A FLAWED STATE EXPERIMENT?

AUTHORS – S. NAVAJATH* & DR. MEENU SHARMA**

* STUDENT AT AMITY LAW SCHOOL NOIDA, AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH

** ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT AMITY LAW SCHOOL NOIDA, AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH

BEST CITATION – S. NAVAJATH & DR. MEENU SHARMA A, THE UTTARAKHAND UNIFORM CIVIL CODE ACT, 2024: A SCALABLE NATIONAL BLUEPRINT OR A FLAWED STATE EXPERIMENT?, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (7) OF 2026, PG. 294-303, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.

ABSTRACT

The Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024 (hereinafter ‘the Act’) is the most significant intervention by legislation in the sphere of Indian personal law since independence. The Act, enacted by the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly on 7 February 2024 and coming into force on 27 January 2025, aims to abolish the religion-specific personal laws and replace them with a secular and unified system of marriage, divorce, succession, adoption, and live-in relationships. Although the Act is constitutionally based on Article 44 of the Constitution of India, which binds the State to establish a unified civil code on all citizens, it includes substantive elements, which pose a multifaceted and unresolved issue of privacy, federalism, minority rights, gender justice, and the democratic legitimacy of homogenising legal pluralism by subordinate state legislations.n. The paper is a critical analysis of the structural architecture of the Act, its constitutional validity, its differences with current judicial pronouncements and the extent to which it can be used as a prototype within the nation. It holds that, although the Act represents a real and long-overdue effort to achieve a directive principle of constitutional morality, its intrusive system of live-in registration, its selectivity that excludes Scheduled Tribes and leaves the Hindu Undivided Family unharmed, and its lack of reference to LGBTQ+ persons all serve to disqualify its pretensions to universality. The paper has concluded that the Act is not an infallible blueprint or completely failed experiment, but a learning and imperfect prototype whose flaws need to be questioned before it can be duplicated at the national level.

Keywords: Uniform Civil Code, Article 44, Directive Principles of State Policy, personal law, live-in relationships, right to privacy, gender justice, federalism, Scheduled Tribes.