Murmu assents to Gujarat's civil code, the second state UCC after Uttarakhand

President Droupadi Murmu has assented to the Gujarat Uniform Civil Code, 2026, and the state has published the text as Gujarat Act No. 15 of 2026. The extraordinary gazette dated 1 October records that assent was given on 17 September. The Act does not start on publication. It starts on a date the state government names in a later gazette notification. Gujarat is the second state, after Uttarakhand, to put a uniform civil code on the statute book.

The Assembly passed the bill on 24 March after a debate of more than seven hours. The Act governs marriage, divorce, succession, live-in relationships and related matters. It extends to the whole of Gujarat and to residents of the state who live outside it. Scheduled Tribes, and groups whose customary rights the Constitution protects, are exempt. That exemption is the line that decides who must register a marriage under the new code and who continues under existing custom.

Marriage rules in the text are specific. Neither party may have a spouse living. The minimum age is 21 for men and 18 for women. Ceremonies already in use are named as valid forms: Saptapadi, Nikah, Anand Karaj and Mangal Fera, along with other customary rites. Registration is compulsory within 60 days. Failure to register can draw a fine of up to 10,000 rupees. Sons and daughters receive equal inheritance rights across the religious communities the Act covers. Bigamy is prohibited. Live-in relationships are brought inside the registration and succession scheme, which is the provision that has drawn the sharpest objection from religious bodies in the Uttarakhand debate and will do the same in Gujarat once a start date is fixed.

The constitutional route explains the gap between the March vote and the October gazette. A state law on a subject that also sits in personal law has to be reserved for the President if the governor so decides, under Article 200 and Article 201. Assent on 17 September closed that reservation. Publication on 1 October told the public the assent had happened. The remaining switch is administrative. The state home or law department must notify the commencement date, name the registrars, and publish the forms for marriage and live-in registration. Until that notification, the Act is law in the gazette and not yet the rule at a sub-registrar's desk.

Uttarakhand's code, passed in 2024 and brought into force later after rules were written, is the working comparison. Gujarat's bill followed the same architecture: a common marriage age, compulsory registration, equal shares for daughters, a live-in chapter, and a tribal exemption. The difference that will show up in court is drafting detail, not the political label. A Gujarat resident who lives in Mumbai falls under the Act's extra-territorial clause for residents. A non-resident who owns property in Ahmedabad does not, unless the succession chapter is read to reach the property itself. That reading will be litigated. The text says it applies to residents of Gujarat living outside the state. It does not, on the gazette summary, claim every plot of land in the state regardless of the owner's residence.

Opposition parties in the Assembly treated the bill as a Bharatiya Janata Party project aimed at Muslim personal law, and argued that a uniform code belongs in Parliament under the directive principle in Article 44, not in a state legislature. The state government answered that personal law is a concurrent field and that Uttarakhand had already taken the state route. Assent does not settle that argument. It means the President's office did not return the bill. A challenge in the High Court or the Supreme Court remains available on fundamental rights, on the tribal exemption's boundary, and on whether live-in registration is a reasonable restriction.

The date that households will feel is the commencement notification, which has not been issued. When it is, a marriage in Gujarat will have to be on the register within 60 days or risk a 10,000 rupee fine, and a daughter will inherit on the same terms as a son in estates the Act covers. Until then the gazette is the law, and the registrar's counter is still on the old forms.