NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday made a strong pitch for enactment of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and said the country could not have different laws for different categories of citizens, strengthening the indication that the government may be considering bringing a bill in Parliament dealing with issues of marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance that would apply to all communities.Modi also talked about the poor condition of Muslims belonging to “backward” castes, the Pasmandas, and attacked the upper caste-dominated leadership of the community and the “secular” political parties for neglecting them while pursuing vote-bank politics.In a home, can there be one law for one member and another law for another member? Will that home be able to function? Then how will the country function with a dual system...

Let us remember that the Constitution recommends uniform laws for all citizens,” Modi said, while addressing BJP workers in Bhopal, in his first public advocacy for UCC after taking over as prime minister in 2014.The loud public articulation of UCC, which has been opposed by members of the Muslim community and the “secular political class”, coincides with signs that after scrapping the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the government could be verging towards fulfilling another of its “core” pledges.The Law Commission recently re-energised the issue of UCC, part of the the Directive Principles and endorsed by the Supreme Court multiple times, by seeking comments from the public.

The 30-day window set for the purpose by the commission gets over on July 14.Parliament’s monsoon session is set to begin around the third week of July and if the government indeed brings the UCC legislation, it will ensure that the sittings, the first in the newly-inaugurated building, turn out to be a stormy affair.Modi, who was responding to a BJP worker who had asked him about the “confusion being spread” among Muslims over UCC, sought to dismiss the dominant objection to the demand for UCC — that personal laws of Muslims are derived from Islam and, therefore, cannot be dispensed with.He said the objection was a ploy by those who treated Muslims as a vote bank, and recalled that abolition of triple talaq or instant oral divorce was also opposed on the same ground despite the fact that Muslim countries, including Pakistan, had banned the controversial practice decades ago.“Islamic countries the world over banned triple talaq.

Would these Muslim-majority countries have done so if triple talaq was indeed integral to Islam? I was recently in Egypt where Sunni Muslims account for 90% of the population.

Egypt outlawed triple talaq 80-90 years ago,” the PM said as he listed Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria and Jordan as examples of Muslim countries which have proscribed triple talaq.He said triple talaq continued to flourish in India because of vote bank politics even though the practice had adverse repercussions for not just women but for the Muslim community as a whole.

“Just imagine, someone marries off his daughter with great excitement only to see her being evicted from her in-laws’ place after 8-10 years.

When the daughter comes back to her parents’ place, it leaves everyone, her father, her brother, dejected,” the PM said as he recalled that the Supreme Court has repeatedly exhorted the political class to move on UCC.Modi hit out at “secular” parties for the poor condition of Muslims.

“They keep accusing us (of being anti-Muslim) but the parties which claim to be champions of Muslims are responsible for their condition,” he said, pointing out that “my Muslim brothers and sisters” would not have been forced to live in adversity had these parties worked sincerely in their interest.Modi singled out the Muslim elite for neglecting the socially backward among Muslims, the Pasmandas.

“If I look at our Muslim brothers and sisters, then I realise that the practitioners of vote bank politics have made lives of our Pasmanda brothers and sisters miserable.

They have been ruined.

They have not received any benefit but there is nobody to listen to them,” he said.“Pasmandas have been exploited by a section of their own community.

They have been denied equality and are seen as untouchable.

But there has been no discussion in the country on this,” he said.Watch“Grave injustice to Muslim daughters…”PM Modi talks about politics around Triple Talaq issue