Kolkata: The Bengal govt is likely to introduce a bill on Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the Assembly on Monday. The Assembly’s Business Advisory Committee, chaired by Speaker Rathindra Bose, decided to email the draft UCC Bill to all MLAs and then table it for discussion on Monday.If passed, Bengal will join states like Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Assam in having a common set of personal laws for all communities. BJP had in its election manifesto pledged to implement UCC in Bengal within six months of coming to office.Along with the UCC bill, the BJP govt will table a second bill — West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-social Activities Bill, 2026 — that will allow up to 12 months of preventive detention for offenders and empower senior district and police officers to issue externment orders. This bill draws heavily from the Gujarat Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act, 1985.Bengal’s UCC bill is likely to be modelled on Assam’s, which on May 27 became the third state in the country to pass the bill.The UCCs implemented in all three states ban polygamy, establish a uniform legal marriage age, enforce mandatory registration of live-in relationships and ensure gender-equal inheritance rights while exempting Scheduled Tribes from their purview. The Bengal bill is likely to have similar provisions, an official said.The proposed anti-social activities bill defines “goonda” as a person or member of a group, gang or syndicate who habitually commits, attempts to commit, abets, promotes, finances or facilitates anti-social activities, or has been chargesheeted under BNS Section 111 or 112 or is implicated under the Arms Act, the NDPS Act, the Explosive Substances Act or the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.The detention provisions incorporated in it can be executed anywhere in the state. The govt will have to place the matter before an advisory board to be headed by a sitting or retired High Court judge within three weeks of detention. A detained person, however, will not be entitled to be represented by a lawyer before the board, though it may be allowed in special cases. The board is to submit its report to the state within nine weeks of detention. If the board confirms, a person can be detained for up to 12 months. However, the state can revoke or modify the detention order at any time.The bill also empowers a district magistrate, a commissioner of police, or a police officer not below the rank of deputy inspector general to issue externment orders, that is, direct a person ‘designated as a goonda’ to move out of a specified area or district for a period not exceeding one year.Any person aggrieved by an externment order may appeal to the state within 15 days, but flouting the order is punishable with imprisonment for up to three years and a fine. The punishment for harbouring such a person can be up to two years of imprisonment along with a fine.
