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`Uniform civil code should include best of all religions'

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL SEPT. 9 . Justice Kumar Rajaratnam, the new Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, today underlined the need for a uniform civil code saying it should incorporate the best of all religions.

Mr. Justice Rajaratnam, who was sworn in as Chief Justice here over the week-end, was talking to this correspondent on board a train while he was on his way to Jabalpur to take up his new assignment. Mr. Justice Rajaratnam was earlier a judge of the Karnataka High Court.

He said "there should be no confusion and the idea is to have a uniform civil code and not a uniform Hindu code". He said a common civil code applicable to all religious groups, including Christians, Parsis and Muslims, would help in addressing the problems linked with the law of succession and maintenance of divorced women. In this context, he particularly cited the Shah Bano case, which related to alimony to a Muslim woman after divorce.

Significantly, the earlier Congress Government had enacted a legislation to nullify the Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Bano case. It was in 1978 that Shah Bano, a Muslim woman, had gone to court seeking maintenance on being abandoned by her husband. She had been compelled to go to court since the Indian legal system continued to recognize the personal laws of the minority communities.

When his attention was drawn to the larger goal of reforms cutting across different minorities and religious groups by going for a common civil code, Mr. Justice Rajaratnam agreed that a common civil code would adequately protect the rights of the Christian women within marriage as well as in the family and in the community. He further said, "When all religious groups can be covered by a common criminal code, why all this debate on a uniform civil code?"

Mr. Justice Rajaratnam said that the subordinate judiciary works in regional languages in different parts of the country and went on to emphasise that English could be effectively used as a link language. About the National Judicial Academy here in Bhopal, he said "till we do not have English as a link language, the National Judicial Academy, which is located at just one place, cannot be very productive".

Asked to share his views on the demand for a High Court bench here in the State capital, Mr. Justice Rajaratnam said it would be his endeavour to improve the existing infrastructure of the High Court. He further said that a bench in Bhopal would lead to similar demands from other parts of the State as well and this would in turn dilute the authority of the principal seat of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Jabalpur.

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