A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking removal of anomalies in the ground of succession and inheritance and make them gender-neutral, religion-neutral, and uniform for all citizens.
The petition stated that the Centre has failed to provide even gender-neutral and religion-neutral uniform grounds of succession and inheritance for all citizens in the spirit of the Articles 14, 15, 21, 44, and international conventions.
The plea filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay stated, "Uniformity in succession and inheritance is not only necessary to secure gender justice, gender equality and dignity of women but also essential to promote fraternity, unity and national integration, but, Centre has not taken any steps in this regard till date. Therefore, a blatant form of discrimination that is the prejudice in the succession and inheritance based on gender and religion is continuing."
The plea sought to declare that the discriminatory grounds of succession and inheritance are a violation of Articles 14, 15, 21 of the Constitution and frame gender-neutral, religion-neutral, uniform guidelines of succession and inheritance for all Indian citizens.
It asked that the Law Commission of India to examine the laws relating to succession and inheritance of the developed countries and International Conventions in this regard and prepare a report on 'uniform grounds of succession and inheritance' for all citizens in the spirit of Articles 14, 15, 21, 44 of the Constitution within three months.
"The injury caused to the citizens is extremely large because gender-biased and religion biased personal laws relating to succession and inheritance are not only against the constitutional ethos of gender justice and gender equality, guaranteed under Articles 14-15 but also against the dignity of women, which is an important element of right life to life and liberty, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution," the PIL further said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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