Mayawati opposes RSS call for uniform population policy

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Saturday opposed the recent pitch by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) ideological mentor the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) about the need for a uniform population policy in the country and described it as a “discordant note”.

“The RSS helps the BJP in each election but never openly criticises the BJP government’s wrong, anti-people policies. Due to such faulty approach of BJP, which have mostly been supportive of capitalists, its party governments are unable to utilise the population as an asset,” Mayawati said, describing the RSS demand as an attempt to give a communal spin to the population debate to help the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Mayawati’s statement, considered a part of her efforts to weaken the Samajwadi Party’s Muslim vote bank by siding with the minority community on sensitive issues like population control, came at a party workers’ meeting in Lucknow on Saturday.

The buzz is that the Uttar Pradesh government headed by chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who had met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in Prayagraj on October 20, is working on a population control policy.

The contours of the purported policy were revealed during Adityanath’s first stint (2017-2022) when the state’s Law Commission had invited suggestions from the people on incorporating provisions like debarring those with more than two children from contesting local bodies’ polls and denying them government subsidies.

In the Yogi government 2.0, the state’s minority commission has embarked on a survey in minority dominated localities to propagate the need for population control.

The Mayawati move coincides also with the soon-to-be announced urban local body polls.

Only recently Mayawati inducted Imran Masood, a party hopper known mostly for his infamous remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, into the party, apparently to boost her party’s minority-connect.

In 2017, BSP candidates had won mayoral posts in Aligarh and Meerut and missed Saharanpur by a whisker.

Mayawati’s demand is also in sync with statements by many Muslim clerics, who had criticised the push for population control as a “one-sided” view.

“To divert people’s attention from issues like poverty, unemployment, inflation, violence, tension and mismanagement in UP and across the country, the RSS has now struck a discordant note by flagging demand for a population control law and raising the issue of conversion. This is blatantly unfair and part of RSS efforts to help the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” Mayawati said. She is the first among any of the top opposition leaders to criticise the RSS demand.

In the recent past, the RSS has flagged the issue of population twice in quick succession.

First, in his Vijayadashmi speech at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat flagged the need for a comprehensive “population control policy”. Then at its subsequent national working committee meet in Prayagraj held from October 16-19, RSS veteran Dattatreya Hosabale reiterated the need for a uniform population policy.

“Population of Hindus has decreased at many places in the country and the consequences (of this) are being witnessed as well,” the RSS top leader had said after the Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal meeting in Prayagraj.