[This is a guest post by Akshay Sriram.]
The Mizo Marriage and Inheritance of Property (Amendment) Bill, 2026 (‘Amendment Bill’ or ‘Bill’) was passed by the State Legislature, altering certain provisions of the Mizo Marriage, Divorce and Inheritance of Property Act, 2014 (‘2014 Act’). The amendments alter the scope of the state’s customary law on marriage and inheritance, and introduces a host of progressive changes to the framework. These include first, a statutory ban on polygamy, necessitating a Divorce Certificate before solemnization of remarriage under Section 6 of the Mizo Bill. Second, leprosy as a ground for divorce has been omitted under Section 13. Third, women can claim 50% of the assets and properties obtained during the subsistence of the marriage.
Backlash Against the Amendment Bill – Certain Peculiar Provisions
A largely progressive Bill also has paved way for certain peculiar provisions, namely the amendments introduced to Sections 2 and 3. Section 2 of the Amendment Bill states that the 2014 Act would now apply to all marriages where both the parties belong to a Mizo tribe or where the male member of the marriage belongs to a Mizo tribe. Similarly, Section 3(5)(m) now redefines the term ‘Mizo’, to mean any individual who are Mizos by birth or whose father belongs to any Mizo tribe.
The amendment has been paraded as a ‘safeguard’ against the ‘possible social assimilation’ of the Mizo community. Chief Minister Lalduhoma stated that women who marry non-Mizos, along with their children and grandchildren, would no longer be entitled to claim Scheduled Tribe (‘ST’) status. The Chief Minister went so far as to state that the customary law did not clearly in its previous form did not clearly define the status of Mizo women who marry outside the community and was silent on the position of children raised strictly in accordance with Mizo culture and traditions. Therefore, under the Amendment Bill, the benefits of customary law, including inheritance and succession is premised upon the father being Mizo and the mother losing her status as Mizo upon marriage with a non-Mizo/non-tribal.
The patriarchal implications of the Amendment Bill seem strongly indicative of an Article 15 violation. In the same vein, the Amendment Bill has received flak from the state’s apex women’s body, the Mizo Hmeichhe Insuikhawm Pawl (‘MHIP’). The MHIP categorically stated that they were neither consulted nor informed of the Amendment Bill, thereby raising legitimacy concerns due to the Amendment Bill’s far-reaching implications against women’s welfare. The broader question of whether a tribal woman is entitled to parity with their male counterparts in matters of intestate succession was addressed and settled by the Supreme Court in Madhu Kishwar and Ors. v. State of Bihar. The Court, while recognising the inapplicability of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 and the Indian Succession Act, 1925 to STs, nevertheless adopted the principles of ‘justice’, ‘equity’ and ‘fairness’ enshrined in these frameworks. It concluded that ST women would succeed and inherit an equal share of the property with absolute rights in the context of intestate succession.
However, Madhu Kishwar’s considerations of equity do not pre-emptively solve the problem that the Amendment Bill creates. This piece argues that the Amendment Bill’s facially neutral setup presents a nuanced problem invisible to the naked eye: It presents a paradigm of ‘Automatic Revocation’ of ST status. This goes astray of settled law relating to the ST status and the entitlements it presents. The piece also incidentally argues that the Amendment Bill is a statutory reinforcement of social excommunication, that violates existing revocation procedure. To characterise these concerns, it is important to understand the constitutional implication of the ST status.
Collective and Individual Revocation of ST Status
The term ‘Scheduled Tribe’ is mentioned in Article 342 of the Indian Constitution, which delineates the process for specifying tribes to be listed as STs. Therefore, the tag of being a ‘Scheduled Tribe’ for a community, group or an individual is a constitutional status; the enforcement of which rests with the National Executive and the Legislature.
First, the President, after consulting the Governor of a State, issues a public notification specifying the tribes under Article 342(1). Second, once the list is notified, only the Parliament can amend it by way of inclusion or exclusion of any tribe, tribal community or group within such community (Section 324(2)). Any exclusionary power rests solely with the Parliament. This provides the basis of what may be called Collective Revocation.
In the context of the Amendment Bill, the tussle begins with the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, under Article 244(2). This delegates powers to the Autonomous District Councils (‘ADCs’) via the State Legislatures, which are endowed with powers to legislate on a wide variety of subjects, including marriage and divorce, inheritance and social customs. The Amendment Act does not apply to the three ADCs in Mizoram which may be subject to their own customary laws as under Section 1. Nevertheless, by virtue of being a constitutional status, neither the ADC nor the State Legislature can unilaterally ‘revoke’ an individual/group’s ST status, as against the parliament.
The catch here is that on an individual level, ST status can be revoked by a separate process of Individual Revocation. A person can exercise their entitlements as a member of ST only to the extent of the existence of their ST certificate. These entitlements are not fundamental, and undergo a process of scrutiny upon some challenge to the legitimacy of the person’s ST identity.
For this process, there are certain State-Level Scrutiny Committees (‘Scrutiny Committees’) that are administrative and quasi-judicial bodies, which have the authority of cancelling previously issued ST certificates on account of fraud, misrepresentation or non-eligibility. In the case of Kumari Madhuri Patil, the process of issuance of social status certificates was delineated with a Vigilance Enquiry, documentary verification, as well as an investigation into the ‘affinity’ of an individual to a particular tribe. Later on, the Supreme Court has in cases like Anand v. Committee for Scrutiny and more recently moved away from considering the Affinity Test as an essential indicator of social status in cancelling or upholding caste or tribe certificates.
This does not directly apply in the context of the Amendment Bill, since a Scrutiny Committee acts as an adjudicatory authority only when there is a specific challenge to the legitimacy of a ST claim. Therefore, in this process, the onus is on verification, which includes a host of processes such as a Vigilance Inquiry and investigation by the Vigilance Cell, as well as checking of pre-1950 records to trace social status. The lack of sufficient probative value disentitles the defendant from seeking benefits from that particular ST identity, whether it is for the purpose of admission, reserved category promotion, or pension upon retirement. An applicant can appeal to the Scrutiny Committee if a local officer has refused grant of certificate as well. Therefore, the adjudication of a Scrutiny Committee is specific to that particular case, and does not bar the applicant from seeking a different social status certificate depending on the circumstance and eligibility.
Importantly, the Scrutiny Committee provides an adequate ‘right of hearing’ to the defendant, before issuing a validity certificate or a cancellation order. In the context of the Amendment Act, there is no such right provided, with the statutory bar being complete and overarching.
Automatic Revocation and the Gate-keeping Effect
It is admitted that the text of the Amendment Act has no direct mention of ‘revocation’ of ST status, since a state law cannot technically override Article 342. But the de facto effect of the Amendment Act’s ambit results in the effective forfeiture of ST status when a woman marries a non-Mizo, extending to her children and grandchildren as well. This has two implications. First, the Amendment Act becomes a ‘gatekeeper’, wherein the State Governments and Scrutiny Committees can refuse to issue or renew ST Certificates which are required for crucial entitlements such as reservation, land rights and scholarships. Second, despite the existence of a valid pre-existing ST Certificate, a woman marrying outside a Mizo tribe would suddenly be statutorily barred from being ‘Mizo’ and availing the benefits of the Act. This presents a third paradigm of Automatic Revocation, creating an automatic statutory bar for certain categories of Mizo individuals from utilising Mizo customary law.
This legitimises ‘social excommunication’ that occurs in tribal communities, with a double jeopardy of stripping down any possible statutory recourse, if social acceptance is no longer possible. The other end of this occurs when Mizo women and their children, despite belonging to and accepted by a Mizo tribe, are nevertheless statutorily barred from accessing legal recourse. This furthers exclusionary tendencies. This begs the question – what is the criteria for ST determination in a hazy scenario such as an inter-caste marriage? What would indicate that the offspring could still avail of the ST tag despite having a non-tribal father?
Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika – ‘Evidence of Upbringing’ and Substantive Equality
The Supreme Court in the case of Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika v. State of Gujarat and Ors. (‘Rameshbhai’) dealt with the cancellation of a tribal certificate by the Scrutiny Committee and the Gujarat High Court (‘GHC’). The child was borne out of an inter-caste marriage, having an upper-caste, Kshatriya father and an ST mother. The certificate was cancelled on the sole ground that the father was a non-tribal, with the HC deeming every other documentary record to be of no relevance.
The Court discussed cases such as Valsamma Paul v. Cochin University as well as Anjan Kumar v. Union of India, while concluding that such a scrutiny is a ‘question of fact’. It rejected the ‘automatic paternal rule’ that the Scrutiny Committee and the GHC used to deem the child to be non-tribal, and that while the ‘automatic paternal rule’ may be presumption, it is nevertheless rebuttable. An applicant would still have the option to claim ST status through the mother, if a three-pronged factual analysis was proven. First, that they were brought up in the tribal community. Second, they were accepted by the community. Third, they suffered the same “deprivations, indignities, and handicaps” as other members of that particular tribe. The third factor is vague and goes unexplained, but for good reason as well. The vagueness provides an expansive scope for the court to interpret disadvantages which may not necessarily be tangible. This test grounds the discussion back to the social reality and lived experience of the child, which may be varied and non-linear, irrespective of the father’s social status. While Rameshbhai seems to be a fact-specific case, the undertones are implicit yet powerful. Acknowledging the fact that an inter-caste marriage may lead to a varying spectrum of experiences that a child may have undergone, including disadvantages and difficulties, Rameshbhai attempts to retain a substantive equality framing by moving away from the automatic paternal rule. The entitlements are thus dependent on social reality.
The Amendment Act goes completely astray of this consideration – no level of community acceptance or knowledge of customs would be a factor in being able to avail of the Act’s benefit. Taking this a step further, this system of Automatic Revocation takes away any attempt at realising the substantive equality that Rameshbhai passively attempts to uphold. The Supreme Court has recently undertaken attempts to view the notion of substantive equality expansively, especially in the context of State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh to traditional matters related to reservations. This seems to be a step towards revisiting substantive equality without collapsing it into a single formula as Sandra Fredman argues. The four-dimensional approach advocates for participation and a shift of focus to the group suffering detrimental consequences attached to a status or identity. Under the Amendment Bill, a child with a Mizo ST mother, who could have previously availed of entitlements by proving their case using the three-pronged factual test, is now statutorily barred from even receiving an opportunity to do so. This forgets the expansive scope of substantive equality which takes note of existing inequalities with the hope of correcting them. In an attempt to deter cultural assimilation and fill up legal lacunae, the Amendment Bill creates an unforgiving restriction: a section of individuals, are left with no recourse despite undergoing the same systemic disadvantages that other members of their tribe have undergone, for no fault of their own.