Assam Cabinet clears draft bill to ban polygamy, tribal areas exempted

Guwahati: The Assam Cabinet on Sunday approved the draft of the Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill, 2025, which seeks to criminalise polygamy across the state. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the bill will be tabled in the Assembly on November 25, with provisions for up to seven years’ imprisonment for those convicted.

The draft legislation exempts Scheduled Tribe communities and will not “immediately” apply to regions governed by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, including the Bodoland Territorial Council, Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, and Dima Hasao Autonomous Council. These areas enjoy limited autonomy and land protection due to their tribal composition.

Sarma also stated that Muslims residing in Sixth Schedule areas prior to 2005 would be exempted, a clause that critics say offers only symbolic protection while enabling selective targeting. In practice, the law will apply primarily to Assam’s non-tribal population, which includes a significant number of Muslim residents.

The chief minister said the bill aims to “empower Muslim women” and announced the creation of a state fund to support women affected by polygamy. “The government will help with financial support in the required cases so that no woman faces hardship in her life,” he told reporters, as quoted by PTI.

Polygamy is permitted under Muslim personal law, which governs marriage and family matters within the community. The practice was outlawed among Hindus in the 1950s through the Hindu Code Bill, which also standardised inheritance, adoption, and divorce.

Rights groups and legal experts have criticised the bill, arguing that Sarma’s repeated framing of polygamy as a Muslim-specific issue reflects a broader ideological push by Hindutva organisations to introduce a Uniform Civil Code (UCC). They warn that such moves threaten India’s plural legal traditions and undermine constitutional protections for religious freedom.