LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh Law Commission is looking into the possibility of having a state enactment for population control.
When asked if the panel was checking the viability of a population control law in the state, the Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission, Justice (retired) Aditya Nath Mittal, said told PTI: “Yes. It is being studied. We are looking at various incentives and disincentives (to have the law),” he added.
Asked about any salient features of the legislative proposal, Justice Mittal said: “We are also looking at various family units, in addition to their aspects of polygamy and polyandry. It is premature to say anything.
“Furthermore, it will only be our recommendation that the government can accept or reject,” he added.
He hoped to submit his panel’s report on the matter to the government in about two months.
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Speaking to reporters earlier in Sambhal, Samajwadi party MP Iqbal Mehmood said the Yogi Adityanath government was planning to pass a population control law and called it a plot against Muslims.
“Any law against population control will be a conspiracy against Muslims,” Sambhal’s SP MLA said.
Mehmood made this claim, saying that “the increase in the country’s population is due to Dalits and Tribals and not Muslims”.
“This is actually an attack on Muslims under the guise of population control,” he said.
“If the BJP thinks that only the Muslim population is increasing in the country, a bill for this law should have been tabled in Parliament so that it can be implemented throughout the country. Why is it presented to the BJP? UP?” Mehmood asked.
Claiming that “Muslims have already understood that one should not take care of more than two or three children”, the MP for Sambhal claimed that the country’s population was increasing due to people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes and not because of the minority community.
Mehmood also warned that any population control law would suffer the same fate as the move to the National Citizen Registry.
“The impact of the NRC in Assam has been more on non-Muslims than on Muslims. The population law will also meet the same fate. I do not understand why the government of Yogi Adityanath, who is only seven years old months in power, talking about a population control law?” He asked.