The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), an organisation working for Muslim women empowerment, has written a letter to the prime minister to codify the Muslim Personal Law as per a draft prepared by them and make certain prevalent practices illegal.

These include making illegal unilateral oral triple talaq, polygamy, (halala) compulsory marriage of women with another person if she intends to re-unite with divorced husband, and temporary marriage contract (Muta). Their draft seeks a law based on Quranic tenets concerning age of marriage, mehr, talaq, polygamy, maintenance and custody of children among other things.

The letter states, "Certain orthodox and patriarchal males have dominated the debate on rights of Muslim women and have stonewalled any attempt towards reform in Muslim Personal Law."

It goes on to agree with the recent Supreme Court observation and question asked to National Legal Services Authority of India if gender discrimination suffered by Muslim women should not be considered as a violation of fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21.

Citing their study and agreeing with observations made by SC judges, the letter added, "Justice for Indian Muslim women can be enabled either through amendments to the Shariat Application Act, 1937, as well as the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, or a completely new enactment of Muslim Personal Law."

"What we need is codification of law. Those who say that codification has happened do not know what codification means," said Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of BMMA. When asked about apprehensions and reservations sounded out due to a "right wing" government at Centre, she added, "It is a democratically elected government, even if it's right wing. All these years we have been talking to them (ulemas) and, despite creating so much noise, they have not done anything. We want a codified, Quran-compliant law. In this way, at least people do not get the opportunity to talk about the uniform civil code."