‘It will harm Hindus’: VHP opposes Yogi’s population control policy

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate, on Monday registered its strong opposition to the draft proposal on population control recently released by the Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission that excludes people with more than two children from availing benefits under government schemes.

The VHP, in its letter to the state law commission, has not just cited policy’s adverse impact on children, it also lists imbalance in communities as ‘different communities respond differently to incentives or disincentives related to family planning and contraption’. The organisation suggested the deletion of Sections 5, 6 (2) and 7 to avoid contraction of population and also undesirable social and economic consequences of a one-child policy.

VHP’s international working president Alok Kumar, who himself is an advocate, advised Uttar Pradesh to avoid getting into a situation where only one community takes the benefit of the policy whereas the other keeps expanding. It is also concerned about the Hindu population contracting whereas other communities are expanding.

‘The Total Fertility Rate of Hindus in states like Assam and Kerala has declined far below the replacement rate of 2.1 but that of Muslims is 3.16 in Assam and in Kerala, it is 2.33. ‘In these states, one of the communities has thus entered the contraction phase while the other is still expanding,’ reads the letter.