Shillong, May 27: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has refused to comment on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) without seeing the draft even as he expressed satisfaction that UCC laws in Uttarakhand and Assam have exempted Scheduled Tribes.
“I cannot comment if I don’t see the format of the UCC… UCC is a Universal Civil Code. What does that UCC mean and what are the codes that will be universal, that is what I need to see,” Sangma told reporters on Wednesday.
Noting that his initial opposition stemmed from fears about tribal customs, he said, “In the beginning when we had looked at the UCC, it was a thought process. When people asked me about UCC at that point, I said no we cannot have UCC because we are tribals and our tribal laws are different.”
However, he noted a shift after examining recent state laws. “Now, we have seen the context of it and how the UCC is coming out in different states. I am slightly more at comfort because if you look at the UCC in Uttarakhand or whether it is in Assam, they are not touching tribal laws,” Sangma said.
“They clearly mentioned that tribal laws are exempted, so obviously it is a different thing then,” he added.
Sangma said Meghalaya would still need to study any proposal in detail. “When that kind of situation comes in, of course we have to study things carefully,” he said.
He said the biggest worry for the state was the potential impact on its matrilineal system.
“We were worried that a national law will come in that will completely change the way the tribals in our state follows matrilineal system,” Sangma said.
“These are the things that bother us but once we started seeing different laws being passed, we could see at least in paper the tribal rights were protected in one way,” he said.
