Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The first Cabinet meeting in Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma’s 2.0 at Dispur today approved the UCC (Uniform Civil Code) Bill and decided to introduce it in the Assembly on May 26 when the first session of the House will conclude. The proposed bill will keep the tribal communities, customary laws, and traditional and religious rituals outside the purview of the bill.
Speaking to the media after the cabinet meeting, the chief minister said, “The cabinet today approved the draft UCC Bill. We’ll lay the bill in the state assembly on the concluding day, May 26. The session will begin on May 21. Taking ethnic and tribal customs in Assam into consideration, we have modified the UCC bill by keeping issues concerning tribal communities, their traditional laws and customary laws and religious rituals outside its purview. Our thrust will be on marriage and divorce registration, polygamy, property rights for girls, and live-in relationships and making rules on them. Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Goa have already implemented UCC.”
The chief minister said that the cabinet decided to take the 2026 Assembly poll manifesto of the BJP as the template for governance of the state in the next five years. “It’s time to work. We need to walk the talk that we uttered in the run-up to the Assembly election in the state,” he said.
The cabinet also approved the setting up of a task force headed by the chief secretary, Dr Ravi Kota, to prepare the roadmap for providing two lakh government jobs to the youths of the state in the coming five years. The task force will submit its report to the government within three months, he said.
The cabinet approved a Rs 32-crore museum project on the Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra premises in Guwahati, dedicated to Dr. Bhupen Hazarika, to preserve the legendary singer’s works and other artefacts related to him. The North Eastern Council (NEC) will provide Rs 13 crore, and the government of Assam will bear the rest of the cost of the project. The Cabinet also decided to hold the concluding celebration of Dr Bhupen Hazarika’s year-long birth centenary at Bharat Mandap in New Delhi on September 8, 2026.
The cabinet also reappointed Devajit Saikia as the advocate general of the Assam government for the next five years.
The Cabinet today selected the senior-most MLA, Chandra Mohan Patowary, as the pro-tem Speaker of the 16th Assam Assembly, He added that the NDA has already proposed MLA Ranjeet Kumar Dass as the Speaker.
On cabinet expansion, the chief minister said, “We’ll expand the Cabinet in the first week of June this year. I need to sit with national BJP president Nitin Nabin to finalize the ministers’ list. Since I cannot go to Delhi now because of the forthcoming Assembly session, I’ll meet Nabin after the Assembly session.”
When asked for comments on the first West Bengal Cabinet meeting taking the decision to hand over required land to the BSF for border fencing with Bangladesh, the Chief Minister said, “This is a positive sign for Assam and the entire Northeast. The longest unfenced stretch along the Bangladesh border falls in West Bengal. Even if we can stop infiltration, infiltrators can enter India through the West Bengal border.”
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