Satire | Reject all time-pass relationships: applications are invited from eligible candidates to ensure full compliance with the newly introduced Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand

As part of its unwavering commitment to regulating personal choices, trampling on liberty and invading privacy, the Department of Moral Surveillance, Kingdom of Uttarakhand, is inviting applications from eligible candidates for the post of Registrar (Live-In Relationships). This role will bring cohabiting couples into full compliance with the newly introduced Uniform Civil Code (UCC).

Job responsibilities

In keeping with the guiding principle of ‘minimum governance, maximum harassment’, the registrar will be tasked with ensuring that all forms of romantic love and companionship are thoroughly vetted, closely monitored, and meticulously documented. Additionally, the registrar will serve as the nodal point for couples seeking to commence, worsen, and terminate a live-in relationship before succumbing to marriage. Responsibilities include:

1. Registration of live-in relationships

• Overseeing the live-in relationship registry and making sure there is no couple cohabitation without prior government authorisation.

• Reviewing applications thoroughly because, as per Section 8(b)(iii) of the UCC, “It is not true love unless it can survive the rigours of unending, meaningless paperwork.”

• Approving only serious relationships, defined as “those backed by supporting documents”.

• Rejecting all time-pass relationships, defined as “those untested by a minimum of 22 rounds of Captcha at the UCC registration website”.

• Issuing live-in relationship licences, renewable quarterly with proof of continued commitment submitted in prescribed format (Form 69F).

• Mastery of Oracle and Mango-Dabba to manage electronic database of live-in couples in Uttarakhand.

This column is a satirical take on life and society.

2. Relationship verification and inspection

• Conducting surprise inspections at the homes of registered couples to verify compliance.

• Inspecting all bedrooms to verify that couples are actually in love and not simply living together to save money or for professional reasons such as joint content channel in the creator economy.

• Interviewing neighbours to confirm that the couple is not engaging in anti-national activities such as fact-checking or truth-speaking in WhatsApp groups and other public forums.

• Apprehending landlord who mistakes illegal live-in couple for legal live-in couple or holy matrimonial couple.

3. Awareness and surveillance programmes

• Organise training programmes for aspiring live-in couples on how to fill out the entire 16-page registration form in 14 days or less.

• Train RWA uncles on how to spot unregistered live-in couples and proceed directly to alerting law enforcement without attempting extortion or sexual harassment.

• Implementing AI-driven surveillance to proactively track non-compliant couples, and if they are between 18 and 21 years of age, inform their parents through automated calls.

4. Doling out punishment

• Ensuring that consenting adults living together without government permission are fined and jailed.

• Be lenient towards couples who undertake to immediately terminate their live-in relationship and revert to Indian culture.

• Taking care to impose the harshest penalty — sentencing a live-in couple to life-term of marriage — only in the rarest of rare cases (say, if a cauliflower was found living in with a broccoli).

Eligibility criteria

• Ph.D in moral policing.

• Minimum seven years non-working experience as a government bureaucrat.

• A keen eye for spotting telltale signs of affection between two people who might be posing as husband-wife when in truth they are actually living in.

• Ability to draft rules demanding tedious, ultra-complicated paperwork.

• Biological age: 45-65 years

• Mental age: Five (for common sense); 75 (for traditional values).

Mandatory supporting documents

Applicants must provide or upload the following documentation along with their application:

• Proof of age: school-leaving certificate, PAN card, and birth certificate, along with death certificate if dead.

• Proof of residence: domicile certificate, and for applicants claiming to be residents of Uttarakhand for one year or more, electricity/water bill or traffic challans issued over three consecutive weeks that are more than a year old.

• Proof of children (or lack thereof): birth certificate, adoption certificate, and a signed affidavit duly notarised by a notified notorious notary certifying that you have no proof that you have or do not have children, as applicable.

• Proof of previous history of relationships, if any: provisional certificate of live-in relationship, final certificate of live-in relationship, termination certificate of live-in relationship, marriage certificate, divorce certificate, it’s-complicated certificate, separated-but-can’t-get-over-it certificate, death certificate of spouse (only if spouse is truly dead). Applicants who furnish all of the above proofs will be given highest preference.

• Four copies of their Aadhaar-wala photographs: applicants who in real life look as hideous as they do in their Aadhaar ID would be given bonus points.

Last date of receipt of applications: Whenever the government declares ‘people in love’ as the biggest internal security threat facing the country.

The author of this satire, is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

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