The decision to replace diverse personal laws with a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), applicable to all Indians, irrespective of religion, gender or caste but still there are several confusions on its applicability.
Questions surrounding the Uniform Civil Code:
Includes existing marriage laws: Marriage laws are easier to unify, but they too have complexity. The commonly cited issue, polygyny, is a red herring since a few Indians practise irrespective of the religion.
Criteria to define UCC: Covering all religion and how to merge the different aspects of religious laws and also the point of selection of criteria to define UCC.
On Individual rights: UCC must be secular and gender-equal on all counts, as women as a vulnerable group will be affected at the most first sight of all reforms.
The difficulties in implementation:
Merging different religious laws: There is a divergence amongst the Hindu laws, which varies from states; region and culture including Hindus of north India to Hindus of south India, matrilineal Hindus (as in Meghalaya and Kerala) have different inheritance rules from patrilineal Hindus.
Related to Inheritance rights: Hindu inheritance distinguishes between separate property and coparcenary joint family property, giving coparceners rights by birth. No other personal law makes this distinction.
Religious instructions and rights: The right to will is unrestricted among Hindus, Christians and Parsis, but Muslim law restricts wills to one-third of the property; and Sunni and Shia Muslims differ on who can get such property and with whose consent.