How BJP plans to weaponise UCC to gain edge in poll-bound UP, break Oppn unity

Yet, BJP insiders, especially from poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, believe it is the timing of Shah’s statement and his stress on introducing the UCC in states that is of significance, not the 2029 deadline.

UCC pitch finds new life in 2022

The UCC is a key ideological promise the BJP inherited from its previous avatar, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, but did not rush to implement in the first decade of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule despite the brute majority the party enjoyed at the Centre. The same period, however, saw the Modi regime take the erstwhile Jana Sangh’s ideological agenda of abrogating Article 370 (in 2019) and constructing a Ram Temple at the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya (in 2024) to fruition.

Also read: A brief history of uniform civil code, and why the idea wouldn't go away

A renewed push for the UCC, which is meant to replace personal laws and customs of various religious minorities and ethnic groups on marriage, divorce, inheritance and adoption with a single codified law, began in the run up to the Uttarakhand Assembly polls in early 2022.

Though Uttarakhand was going to polls alongside Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Goa, it was only in the hill state that the BJP aggressively campaigned for a UCC. In the five years since, the BJP has selectively, albeit with increasing frequently, invoked the UCC as a key poll promise in several state elections.

Uttarakhand shows the way

If Uttarakhand became the first Indian state to enforce the UCC as law in January 2025, the assemblies of BJP-ruled Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Assam passed largely similar versions of the Code earlier this year. In Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, BJP-led governments have constituted committees to draft their own versions of the Code. If the experience from Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Assam is anything to go by, the basic template for the Code in Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra is anticipated to be, well, uniform.

Also read: UCC live-in registration | ‘State barging into bedrooms,’ says young India

Goa, where the BJP has been in power since 2012, has had in place the Goa Civil Code – rechristened from the erstwhile Portuguese Civil Code – preceding its liberation in 1961, although its efficacy as a uniform civil law remains questionable.

Shah’s promise comes ahead of UP polls

As such, by reaffirming BJP’s commitment to the UCC at his interaction with the media in Mumbai on September 13, Shah hasn’t really broken any new ground. He has merely reiterated an ideological commitment that his party has now found the political need to weaponise anew.

The obvious question then is why the home minister chose to regurgitate a promise his party has repeatedly made and, in the past five years, begun to implement actively, although not as a central law as originally envisaged but as an identical set of laws adopted by different states ruled by his party.

Broadly speaking, BJP leaders believe there are at least two explanations for Shah’s move to rake up the UCC now. The first seems to be the rather obvious belief among a section of BJP’s leaders in Uttar Pradesh that the pitch is part of the central leadership to keep the communal cauldron simmering in the state due for polls early next year and draw benefit from the religious polarisation it could trigger.

Also read: One nation, many codes: The contradiction inside Amit Shah’s 2029 UCC promise

“In 2022, we promised UCC in Uttarakhand but didn’t press on it in Uttar Pradesh even though nearly 22 per cent of our population are Muslims, but the elections next year are different from what we faced five years ago. In 2022, even though there was some concern about us losing some seats due to various issues, the overwhelming feedback was that the party will retain power. This time around, though we are confident of winning, there is a sense that the contests will be much closer if the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress continue in alliance because they can consolidate the anti-incumbency vote better,” said a BJP MP from eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The MP added, “A strong UCC pitch is bound to draw a reaction from the SP and the Congress because they need to appease their Muslim voters; Muslim organisations will also react. Polarisation will become inevitable in such a scenario and BJP always benefits from Hindu unity.”

Opposition pushes back

Opposition leaders like Imran Masood, the Congress MP from Saharanpur, Samajwadi MP from Sambhal Zia-ur-Rahman Barq and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, who hopes to expand his AIMIM’s electoral footprint in Uttar Pradesh, have all slammed Shah’s UCC pitch already. While Masood called the UCC a bid to “drive away 25 crore Muslims from India,” Owaisi called the Code an attempt to “impose Hindu law on non-Hindus”.

Barq told The Federal that the BJP’s UCC push was a “continuation of its attempts at targeting the Muslims... their only agenda is to humiliate one community and sow hatred between Hindus and Muslims; they take away our voting rights through the SIR, they bulldoze our mosques, they enact laws to seize our religious endowments (waqf) and now they want to take away our personal laws too, which the Constitution protects.”

The pushback from the Opposition has been swift and, by all indications, will grow shriller as elections draw closer. That’s exactly the reaction the BJP is counting on.

BJP banks on Opposition fury

A BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh and former Union minister said the SP had a strong plank in Akhilesh Yadav’s push for PDA (consolidation of backwards, Dalits and Muslims) while the BJP had “suffered some loss in our core voters because of issues like the Ram Mandir donation theft allegations and anger among Brahmins and the youth on various issues”.

Also read: No choice, no voice: Indian Muslims driven to both accept UCC and lose franchise

The leader said communal polarisation, as a result of the push for a UCC, alongside other issues concerning the Muslims such as state-backed bulldozer action, the enactment of the Waqf Amendment Act and the ubiquitous sense of continued demonisation of the community, “could help the BJP divert attention from the issues of Ram Mandir donation theft, spiralling unemployment, exam paper leaks and others that the SP-Congress alliance hopes to focus on”.

Why state law and not central law?

It’s not just all about winning Uttar Pradesh. BJP insiders say there is also a “well-thought out” legislative strategy behind Shah’s insistence on implementing the UCC from state to state instead of bringing in one central law applicable to the entire country in a single stroke.

“Look at it this way. Most issues covered under a UCC are part of the concurrent list, which means both Centre and state can enact laws regarding them. If we were to bring a common central law, it would have united the entire Opposition at a national level, caused protracted protests and there was no guarantee that we would be able to pass the law in the current Lok Sabha because even though it won’t require a constitutional amendment, we will still need support of all allies as we don’t have the majority we did from 2014 to 2024; allies like JD-U and TDP may not have supported us on this because they also have to think of their Muslim vote bank,” explained a party veteran, who was also part of Modi’s first cabinet.

Also read: Are Anti-Muslim rhetoric and ‘bulldozer model’ BJP’s long-term poll strategies in UP?

By enacting separate, albeit identical, Codes in states where the BJP is in power, the party believes it can keep political resistance from the Opposition both localised and disjointed.

“If a UCC is enacted in Uttarakhand or Gujarat, why will the Samajwadi Party take to the streets in Uttar Pradesh... in fact, with the exception of Maharashtra and now Bengal, most states where we have so far pushed for the UCC, our only rival is the Congress; they are so busy with their own internal fights that they can’t even run their election campaign properly, so how will they sustain a campaign against UCC... did they do it in Uttarakhand or Gujarat or Assam or Madhya Pradesh,” the party veteran quoted earlier said.

Central code could be future reality

With the BJP currently in power with an absolute majority in as many as 15 states and Union territories and this tally rising further to 21 with the addition of six NDA-ruled states and UTs, BJP leaders believe that once a bulk of these states enact their own UCC, the Centre can make a case for a central code to reconcile the different state laws. Such a strategy would also help the party present the enactment of a central UCC as a fait accompli to slippery allies like the JD(U) and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP.

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As the BJP MP quoted earlier put it, “the deadline of 2029 may not be sacrosanct but fulfilling our promise of implementing the UCC is.”