While UP BJP Leaders Want Population Control Plan, 50% Of Party MLAs Have Over 2 Kids: Report

In a draft bill aiming to control the population, the UP government proposes to bar people with over two children from contesting local body elections, applying for and getting promotion in government jobs and availing government subsidies. But in a great irony, if these provisions of the draft Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill, 2021, are applied for elections to the state¡¯s legislative assembly, half of the MLAs of the ruling BJP would be disqualified, as per TNN.

According to the Uttar Pradesh state assembly, of the 397 current MLAs whose bio profiles are on the website, 304 are from BJP of which 152 have three or more children.

PTI

One MLA has 8 children

One of the MLAs has eight children ¡ª the highest in this list. There is one another with seven children. Apart from them, there are eight members with six children each while 15 are parents of five children each. Another 44 MLAs from the ruling party have four children each, while 83 have three children each. All of them would get disqualified if similar norms were to be applied to the state legislature. Another irony can be spotted on the Lok Sabha¡¯s list of business. The BJP¡¯s Gorakhpur MP and Bhojpuri film actor Ravi Kishan, who himself has four children, has been listed to introduce the Population Control Bill, 2019, which aims at controlling population growth in the country. Private member¡¯s bills have little chance of being passed without the support of the government. According to PRS Legislative, Parliament has not passed any private members' bills since 1970.

Like the UP proposal, this bill too focuses on disincentivising couples having more than two children by making them ineligible for government jobs and subsidies. Incidentally, according to the Lok Sabha website, 168 sitting MPs have three or more children of which 105 are BJP members.

ANI

In December last year, in response to a PIL seeking a population control law based on the China model, the union government told the Supreme Court that India was on the verge of achieving a replacement level of fertility rate of 2.1 through various voluntary birth control measures. It added that international experience like the China model showed that any coercion to have a certain number of children was counter-productive and would lead to demographic distortion.

The Union health ministry submitted that 25 of 36 states/ UTs had already achieved replacement level fertility of 2.1 or less. But 146 districts in seven states ¨C UP (57), Bihar (37), Rajasthan (14), MP (25), Chhattisgarh (2), Jharkhand (9) and Assam (2) ¡ª had fertility rates above 3. According to the Census office, 2001-11 was the first decade in the last 100 years in which India added less to its population than in the previous one, it added.