UK cabinet likely to approve draft UCC, meeting at 4pm: Meet the team of 5 who drafted it

The Uttarakhand government is likely to approve the draft Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the cabinet meeting scheduled for 4 pm on Saturday, making the BJP-ruled state the first in the country to adopt the UCC 》The state paved the way.

Once approved by the cabinet, the bill is likely to be tabled in a four-day special parliamentary session from February 5 to 8.

This comes after a government-appointed panel headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai on Friday asked Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami Singh Dhami, who said “the long-awaited moment has arrived”.

As the Uttarakhand government gets closer to making the UCC a reality, here’s everything you need to know about the experts responsible for the draft.

The five-member committee, which is responsible for the UCC draft, is headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai. The expert committee has two sub-committees – the first comprising Justices (retired) Permod Kohli, Gaur and Singh, to draft the guidelines. The second group, consisting of Drs. Gaur, Singh and Dangwal, consulted the stakeholders.

Justice (Retired) Ranjana Prakash Desai

Desai is a retired Supreme Court judge who obtained his law degree from the Government College of Law in 1973 and later joined the legal profession. In 1979, she was appointed as the Government Pleader in the Bombay High Court and subsequently as the Special Public Prosecutor for preventive detention matters in the High Court.

Desai headed several important selection committees constituted by the government, including recommending a panel from which the chairman and members of the Lokpal would be selected. She is also the Chairman of the Delimitation Commission of Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland with effect from March 6, 2020.

Justice (retired) Permod Kohli

Justice Kohli obtained his law degree from Jammu University in 1972. He was appointed Additional Attorney General of Jammu and Kashmir during the Governor’s rule in 1990 and later took over as the then Attorney General of the state.

In 2011, Kohli was appointed Chief Judge of the Sikkim High Court and retired in 2013. He was subsequently appointed Chairman of the Central Administrative Tribunal.

Shatrughan Singh

Singh, another member of the expert committee, is a 1983-batch IAS officer of Uttarakhand cadre and is an engineer. In November 2015, he became the 13th Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand and served for one year.

After his retirement, Singh was appointed as the chief information commissioner of the state by the then Bharatiya Janata Party government. Singh is also a member of the Ayodhya Ram Temple Building Committee.

Dr Surekha Dangwal

Dangwal is the Vice-Chancellor of Doon University, Dehradun and was the Head of the Department of English, Modern European and Other Foreign Languages ​​at Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University in Srinagar, Uttarakhand.

She has 34 years of teaching and research experience, and her research interests focus on South Asian women’s studies, diaspora literature, and literary theory.

Manu Gaur

Gall was an agriculturist by profession. He is also the Chairman of TAXAB (Taxpayers Association of Bharat) and a renowned social worker.

He is said to have been instrumental in drafting the first Responsible Parenthood Act on population control. Gaur has also been working on UCC and population control issues since 2012.