Abhishek Singhvi interview: ‘Uttarakhand UCC’s live-in provision is surveillance by registration…directly violative of many SC judgments on privacy, autonomy & Art 21’

The Congress Working Committee (CWC)’s member and the party’s national spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi is a three-time Rajya Sabha MP and an eminent lawyer. He is currently also the chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committees on Home Affairs, Law, and Commerce. In an interview with The Indian Express, Singhvi speaks on various burning issues, ranging from the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) to the Gyanvapi and Mathura disputes. Excerpts:

Q) Uttarakhand ruled by the BJP has just become the first state to pass a UCC Bill. How do you view it as a veteran Congress leader and as a senior lawyer from legal and political points of view?

It is clearly a political and symbolic gesture, unleashed just before (Lok Sabha) elections, with the usual great event management and fanfare for which the BJP is famous. If the UCC is to have any meaning, it has to be the product of all-India consensus in a single national law. The BJP is far away from that, so it has gone ahead and done this usual tokenism, very similar to the Women’s Reservation Bill we saw a short while ago.

Q) Are there any objectionable provisions in this UCC legislation?

The most objectionable part of the UCC is this huge moral policing and intrusion regarding live-in relationships. It is astonishing that a civil code has at all brought in this topic because it does not belong to the core issues of the UCC. I call it surveillance by registration. It is directly violative of innumerable Supreme Court judgments adumbrating the rights to privacy, autonomy and Article 21 generally.The harassment arising will be unending and serious. You are allowing even third parties to complain and parental, governmental and third party intrusion and harassment is inevitable. The reason given for