Uttar Pradesh Minorities Commission seeks to build consensus on population control

The Uttar Pradesh Minorities Commission has decided to propagate the need for population control in Muslim-dominated districts of the state, a move that is being viewed as a precursor to the state government’s plan to enact population-control legislation in the most populous state.

“We are setting up a team to collect feedback on population control from districts with more than 25% minority population. The idea is to tell the community that more heads won’t usher in more prosperity as resources are limited,” said Ashfaq Saifi, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Minorities Commission.

He said the feedback collected by the commission’s team would be submitted to chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh assembly speaker Satish Mahana and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla.

The move is significant as in September 2021, chief minister Yogi Adityanath had said that a “law for population control” would be brought at the “right time.”

Adityanath’s remarks had come two months after a draft bill was put up on the website of the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission, inviting suggestions from the public on incorporating provisions like debarring those with more than two children from contesting local polls and denying them government subsidies.

In 2020, Union minister Sanjeev Balyan, the Lok Sabha MP from Muzaffarnagar, had visited Adityanath and appealed to him to introduce a population control law.

In June, Union minister for food processing industries Prahlad Singh Patel had stated that the Modi government had plans to introduce a population control law.

“It’s a part of the commission’s mandate to talk about measures for the welfare of the community. Population control legislation is thus a need of the hour,” said Ashfaq.

UP minister of state for minorities Danish Azad Ansari said population control was a desired move.

“I think if the commission is initiating such a step, it needs to be welcomed,” Ansari said. Muslims are the biggest religious minority group in Uttar Pradesh. The UP Population Control Policy 2021-2030 is aimed at lowering the gross fertility rate among women to 2.1 by 2026 and 1.9 by 2030.

As per a study by Delhi-based CSDS, Muslim women (2.61) had a higher fertility rate than Hindu women (2.13) and yet, according to a National Family Health Survey, the population growth rate among Muslims has been declining since 1971.

“Population control is in everybody’s interest. Isn’t it? Even Uttarakhand, that was carved out from U.P, has a policy to incentivise population control. Why shouldn’t Uttar Pradesh have it? Why should political motives be attributed to any such move,” a U.P. minister asked, refuting the theory that population control move was targeted at any particular community.

In July 2021, the government had made it clear that a population control policy would also result in reducing maternal and infant deaths in a phased, time-bound manner.