Explained: How polygamy is regulated in India, from personal laws to state bans

Patchwork of personal laws

Since India does not have a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) applicable to the entire nation, matters of marriage, divorce and succession are governed by personal laws based on religious identity.

For the majority of the population, monogamy is the only legal form of marriage. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 – which governs Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs – prohibits bigamy. If a person governed by the Hindu Marriage Act marries again while a spouse is living, the second marriage is considered invalid.

Similarly, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936 expressly prohibits bigamy for Parsis. The Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872, on the other hand, prohibits the certification of marriages involving Christians if either of them is already married to someone else.

Section 82 of the BNS criminalises bigamy when “such marriage is void by reason of its taking place during the life of such husband or wife.” This means that when bigamy is prohibited by a personal law, engaging in it would invite criminal penalties – of imprisonment up to seven years, along with a fine.

The exception to the rule lies in Muslim personal law. Governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, Muslim men are legally permitted to have up to four wives. Consequently, the penal provisions of the BNS regarding bigamy do not apply to Muslim men as their personal law sanctions the practice. This legal dichotomy – where an act punishable by jail for a Hindu is a legal right for a Muslim – has been a central point of contention in the debate surrounding a nation-wide UCC.

New state bans on polygamy

The legislative moves in Assam and Uttarakhand seek to override the Muslim personal law exemption within the states.

The Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code, passed in February 2024, explicitly bans bigamy. The Code lists five conditions for marriage, the first being that “neither party has a spouse living at the time of the marriage”. This provision applies to all residents of the state, effectively nullifying the permission for polygamy previously available to Muslim residents.

The Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill, 2025, is notably stringent. It categorises the offence of polygamy as being cognisable (allowing an arrest without a warrant) and non-bailable (where bail is not guaranteed as a matter of right). The Bill proposes imprisonment of up to seven years and a fine for entering into a polygamous marriage. If the offence involves concealing a former marriage from the new spouse, the imprisonment can extend up to 10 years.

Beyond incarceration, the Assam legislation imposes civil disabilities. A person convicted under this law will be ineligible for public employment funded by the state and will be barred from contesting any elections in Assam.

However, both state legislations do not apply to tribal communities.

The Uttarakhand Bill explicitly states that its provisions do not apply to members of any Scheduled Tribes whose customary rights are protected under the Constitution. Similarly, the Assam Bill exempts tribal populations and does not apply to areas under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, such as the Bodoland Territorial Region and the hill districts of Dima Hasao, Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong. This exclusion is meant to protect the unique customary practices of tribal groups, which are safeguarded under the Constitution.

Goa exception

While Assam and Uttarakhand are recent entrants into this legal space, Goa has operated under a uniform code for over a century – well before it integrated with India. This is by virtue of the state having retained the Portuguese Civil Code,1867, which it operated under as a Portuguese colony, even after its liberation in 1961.

In Goa, marriage is a contract between two persons of different sexes and the civil registration of marriage is mandatory. It generally mandates monogamy – therefore, a Muslim man in Goa cannot legally have a second wife.

However, the Goa Civil Code contains a unique, albeit archaic, provision for Hindus. It permits a Hindu man to marry a second time under specific, limited circumstances: if his wife fails to conceive by the age of 25 or fails to deliver a male child by the age of 30. While this provision exists in the statute, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has said that the provision for Hindus is virtually “redundant” and that “no one has been given the benefit of it since 1910”.

Why states can regulate polygamy

The ability of the state to legislate on this issue stems from the legal position that polygamy is not a fundamental tenet of religion.

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that polygamy was not an integral part of Islam and that the state had the power to reform such practices. The bench, comprising Justices T.S. Thakur and A.K. Goel, observed that “what was protected under Article 25 [of the Constitution – which guarantees the fundamental right to freedom of religion] was the religious faith and not a practice which may run counter to public order, health or morality.”

The next state to outlaw polygamy may be Gujarat. The state government in February set up a committee to assess the need to have a common civil code and to prepare a draft UCC. The committee is headed by Justice Ranjana Desai, who had also helmed a similar panel in Uttarakhand that had prepared the draft UCC there.

In 2015, the Gujarat High Court had called for the abolition of polygamy among Muslims. In an order, Justice J.B. Pardiwala, who is currently a Supreme Court judge, called the practice against the Constitution and “heinously patriarchal”.