Less than two weeks after the second Himanta Biswa Sarma-led NDA government took oath in Assam, it has introduced a Uniform Civil Code Bill for the state, following the templates of those in Uttarakhand and Gujarat, including compulsory registration of live-in relationships and penal provisions for non-compliance.
The 154-page Bill was introduced Monday — on the third day of the first session of the newly elected Assam Legislative Assembly. The move drew criticism from opposition parties Congress, Raijor Dal and Trinamool Congress, which demanded wider consultations before the Bill was tabled. It will come up for discussion and consideration later this week.
The Bill states that its aim is to “govern and regulate the laws relating to marriage and divorce, succession, live-in relationships, and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”. It states that the proposed legislation will extend to the whole of Assam and “applies to residents of Assam who reside outside the territories to which the code extends.” However, it exempts Scheduled Tribes, whose population in Assam stood at 12.44% in the 2011 Census.
Over the last few years, the NDA government has enacted multiple legislations relating to marriage, including the Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Act 2025 and the Compulsory Registration of Muslim Marriages and Divorces Act 2024. The UCC Bill seeks to build on these by setting out conditions for marriage, including that the man must be at least 21 years old and the woman 18. It also requires that neither party has a spouse living at the time of marriage, and that neither is party to a marriage that has not yet been dissolved or annulled by a decree of divorce.
It also requires that “neither party has given consent to the marriage by force, coercion, deception or fraud”; and that the parties are not “within the degrees of prohibited relationship”. The Bill lists 37 such ‘prohibited relationships’ — including first cousins.
The draft law seeks to mandate the registration of all marriages, where at least one of the parties is a resident of the state, with an appointed sub-registrar within 60 days of solemnising the marriage. Similarly, it seeks to mandate the registration of all divorces within 60 days of the decree.
“The registers of marriage and divorce, the registers of appeals and such other registers as may be prescribed, which are maintained under this Part, shall, at all reasonable times, be open for inspection by any person,” it states. It also seeks to lay down “uniform grounds for divorce” such as cruelty, desertion and mutual consent.
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Succession, live-in
The most extensive part of the Bill relates to succession. A note by the Assam government highlights the provisions for devolution of the estate of a person who dies intestate — or without a legal will — saying that it “creates a uniform, gender-equal order of preference for intestate inheritance among Class-1 heirs, which equitably includes the spouse, children, and parents of the deceased”.
Like in Uttarakhand and Gujarat, a critical part of the Bill relates to live-in relationships, requiring their registration within the state with an appointed sub-registrar. It even extends to “any resident(s) of Assam staying in a live-in relationship outside the territory of the state” to “the Sub-Registrar within whose jurisdiction such resident(s) ordinarily resides.”
The proposed legislation says such a relationship will not be registered if the partners are “within the degrees of prohibited relationship”, if either person is married or already in another live-in relationship, if either is a minor, or if “the consent of one of the partners was obtained by force, coercion, undue influence, misrepresentation or fraud as to any material fact or circumstance concerning the other partner, including her/his identity”.
It proposes penalising those who stay in such a relationship for more than a month without submitting a statement to the sub-registrar, with imprisonment upon conviction for up to three months or a fine of up to Rs 10,000, or both. It proposes a greater penalty of up to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of up to Rs 25,000 if the sub-registrar receives “a complaint or information” on an unregistered relationship, sends the couple a notice to submit a statement of their relationship, and they fail to do so.
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It also seeks to require the submission of a “statement of termination in the prescribed format and in the prescribed manner to the Sub-Registrar” at the end of such a relationship, and enables a woman “deserted” by her live-in partner to claim maintenance. It says “any child of a live-in relationship shall be a legitimate child of the couple.”
