Union govt constitutes 22nd Law Commission of India; appoints Ritu Raj Awasthi as chairperson

The union government has constituted the 22nd Law Commission of India with the appointment of former Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi as its chairperson. Former Kerala High Court judge Justice KT Sankaran, Prof Anand Paliwal, Prof DP Verma, Prof Raka Arya and M Karunanithi have been appointed members of the Commission.

The last Law Commission functioned under the chairmanship of Justice BS Chauhan, who retired in August 2018. It has remained vacant since. The law panel advises the government on complex legal issues.

Justice Awasthi retired as the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court on July 3, 2022. He was earlier a judge of the Allahabad High Court and has also worked as the Assistant Solicitor General of India. He had presided over the full Bench of the High Court, which upheld the ban on wearing hijab by Muslim girls in government colleges in Karnataka.

Justice KT Sankaran was a judge of the Kerala High Court from February 2005 to December 2016. In 2009, Sankaran had infamously created a controversy by propounding the theory of "love jihad" for the first time in the country. Later, another bench of the High Court held that there was no evidence to confirm the allegations of “love jihad”.

Prof Anand Paliwal is an associate professor at Mohanlal Sukhadia University in Udaipur, Rajasthan, while Prof DP Verma has been the ex-Head and Dean of the Law School at Banaras Hindu University.   Prof Raka Arya is teaching at the National Law Institute University at Bhopal.

BJP Lok Sabha member Nishikant Dubey had raised the issue of the importance of having a UCC in a Zero Hour reference in December last year. Responding to the issue, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had said that the Law Commission would examine issues relating to the Uniform Civil Code and make recommendations.

In June 2016, the Union law ministry had asked the 21st law panel to examine matters in relation to the Uniform Civil Code. After detailed research and a number of consultations held over the course of two years, the commission had issued a consultation paper on the reform of family laws in India.