One thing though remained constant all these years – it was the family laws dealing with succession and inventories. For decades, before Liberation and after that, Goa’s family laws and succession has been decided by the Codigo Civil 1867 of the former colonial rulers, a law that was in written Portuguese and remained in the Portuguese language all these years.
It has now been replaced.
Last week the government finally introduced and passed the Goa Succession, Special Notaries and Inventory Proceeding Bill, 2012 that will replace the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 and set new rules for inventory proceedings and notary services. Even in doing this there was a delay of four years. The bill was ready in 2012, when it was sent to the House Select Committee for consideration. The Select Committee decided that the bill be introduced in the House in the original format, and that was the bill that the Assembly passed last week.
The statement of objects and reasons of the bill is quite clear that the main reason to replace the existing civil code is that the original text of the code is scattered in several enactments and is in the Portuguese language led to difficulties of understanding and delays in disposal of cases. Yet, over the decades since Liberation the government made no attempt to get the code translated, depending instead on independent translations done by advocates.
The State was in dire need of a new succession law – one that takes into consideration the changed political and social circumstances – but while the Legislative Assembly passed the bill unanimously, the legal fraternity has not been unanimous on welcoming it or its provisions, with one lawyer even questioning whether the State had the right to introduce and pass the bill or the Centre should have done so as the civil code was passed to the Union government by the Portuguese and not to the government of the State.
That technicality apart, there are also questions being asked of whether suggestions made by the legal fraternity to the bill were adopted and even the claim that the bill is the Portuguese law merely translated in the English language with a more modern outlook. The civil code, however, was more emancipated than many other Indian laws as it gave men and women equal rights to property, making it unique in that sense. The new law goes further, as is stated in the objects and reasons, by taking a more humane and fair outlook on illegitimacy, on mentally challenged persons, and on those who were earlier denied property rights because of social stigma.
There have already been charges of errors in the new law and vested interests pushing for the legislation which, some lawyers argue, does not protect the interests of Goans settled abroad but who own ancestral land here. Goa also has a unique situation of its residents up to two generations from the time of Liberation eligible for Portuguese citizenship and which a large number of people have opted for, and have journeyed abroad on this citizenship. The government will have to handle this criticism carefully.
So far the flaws in the new legislation are all perceived. They will be detected once it gets notified and becomes a law, possibly leading to amendments to fine tune it. The Portuguese Civil Code has drawn a lot of praise and has even been considered as a base for the uniform civil code that has been proposed for the entire country. Time will tell whether this law has improved over the existing code.
