Already, in the state of Assam, individuals with more than two children are barred from contesting Panchayat polls. Now, with Himanta Biswa Sarma at the helm of affairs in Assam, the state is all set to adopt a strict two-child policy, which will bar individuals from availing benefits under certain state government schemes if they have more than two children. However, the people belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Tea Tribe community will be exempted from the two-child norms for availing state government’s schemes. So, the target of the policy seems clear.
The decision to gradually adopt a stringent two-child policy comes a week after chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had called on the state’s Muslim community to adopt ‘decent family norms’ in order to bring down the state’s population and eradicate ‘social menaces like poverty’. On his government’s first month anniversary, Sarma said, “We want to work with the minority Muslim community to control the population explosion. Social menaces like poverty and land encroachment have their roots in the population explosion. We can solve several social problems if the immigrant Muslims can adopt decent family norms…this is my appeal to them.”
At a press conference on Saturday, the Assam chief minister made his plans about controlling Assam’s population clear, and said, “We will slowly implement population norms for government schemes…in the case of some schemes, say if a scheme like a Chief Minister Awas Yojana is launched in the future for the middle-class, then the two-child norm will be enforced. Similarly, population norms will gradually be put in place in the case of some chosen schemes.”
He, however, said that the two-child policy cannot be implemented under central government schemes like availing free admission in schools and colleges, or for houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. Apart from bringing state government schemes under the ambit of the two-child policy, Assam had, in 2019 itself, decided that those with more than two children would not be eligible for government jobs from January 2021.
Read more: Assam CM Himanta ‘requests’ minority families to keep a check on birthing kids
In the last 10 years, Assam has registered a population growth rate of 16.93 per cent with the population in absolute numbers increasing from 26,638,407 to 31,169,272.
The opposition in Assam, meanwhile, has fallen to a new low – and is raising the issue of Himanta Biswa Sarma having five brothers. Responding to the new low in politics, the chief minister said, “There is no point in talking about what our parents did or other people did in the 1970s. The opposition is saying these strange things and pushing us back to 70s.”
In May, the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government of Assam had announced that it will be introducing a ‘Cow Protection Bill’ in the next assembly session. The Assam Governor, speaking on behalf of the BJP government in the state also said that cows nurture people as the animal gives them “life-sustaining milk”. The Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government in Assam is already making great strides in ensuring that the interests of the long-ignored Hindu community in Assam are served.