Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh will get a Uniform Civil Code if the BJP returns to power, Home Minister Amit Shah said on Friday, opening his party's state working committee meeting with a promise that lands squarely in the middle of the coming assembly election.
"Many states have implemented the UCC. Make the BJP government for a third time in Uttar Pradesh, and we will implement it here too," Shah said, in remarks translated from Hindi.
Uttarakhand already has the code in force. Goa, Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have been named as the next in line, and committees to draft it have been set up in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, according to the party.
Shah reached for a Ramayana image to describe the BJP's position in the state. "In UP the BJP is Angad's foot, nobody can move it," he said, and asked workers to prepare for a third term. Praising Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he claimed that firm administration had freed the state from mafia influence.
The Home Minister also walked through the party's own record. In 2014, he said, the BJP had only 44 MLAs in the state. That year it won 73 of 80 Lok Sabha seats with about 41 per cent of the vote. In 2017 it took 312 assembly seats with around 40 per cent.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav's response was a single line: "Badi der kar di, meharbaan aate aate" — you have come, but very late.
With the assembly election approaching, the UCC is shaping up as the BJP's big plank in India's most populous state. Opposition parties have opposed the move, framing it as an appeal to majority sentiment rather than a reform.
Much of Shah's speech was about organisation rather than office. He recalled taking the party machinery down to the tehsil level before the numbers turned, and told workers there was no room for doubt about the outcome this time.