New plea in Pinnacle Court to manage Population explosion

PIL is seeking direction to the Centre to regulate population explosion so as to secure the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, 19, 21 of the Constitution

A fresh PIL has been filed within the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Centre to border effective rules, regulations and guidelines to regulate population explosion.

The plea filed by Devkinandan Thakur, a resident of Mathura, sought direction from the Central government to determine the feasibility of enacting a stringent social control law to secure fundamental rights including the proper to air, right to water, right to food, right to health, right to sleep, right to shelter, right to livelihood, right to justice and right to education.

“The PIL is seeking direction to the Centre to regulate population explosion so as to secure the essential rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, 19, 21 of the Constitution,” the petition stated.

It added, “Petitioner submits that right to wash air, right to potable, right to health, right to peaceful sleep, right to shelter, right to livelihood and right to education guaranteed under Articles 21-21A, can’t be secured to any or all citizens without effective social control, but, Centre has not implemented National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution’s 24th proposal till date.”

“125 crore Indians have Aadhaar Card while around 20 per cent i.e. 25 crore citizens are without Aadhaar, and around 5 crore Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators, illegally residing in India. From this, it's evident that the whole population of India is over 150 crore and India has marched sooner than China,” the plea added.

Earlier, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, grandnephew of India’s first Education Minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, advocate Ashwini Upadhyay et al. also filed similar pleas.

The Centre had earlier told the Supreme Court that India is unequivocally against forcing birth control on its people and any coercion to own a particular number of kids is counter-productive and ends up in demographic distortions.

In its affidavit filed within the top court, the Health Ministry had told the apex court that the family welfare programme within the country is voluntary in nature, which enables couples to choose the dimensions of their family and adopt birth control methods best suited to them, per their choice and with none compulsion.

The pleas said population explosion is that the root reason behind quite 50 per cent of problems in India.

The PILs sought directions to the Centre to establish the feasibility of constructing the “Two Child” Law as a criterion for presidency jobs, aids and subsidies, right to vote, right to contest, right to property, right to free shelter etc.

The government should declare the primary Sunday of each month as Health Day in situ of Polio Day to spread awareness of the population explosion and supply contraceptive pills, condoms, vaccines etc. to EWS and BPL families, with polio vaccines, said one in all the pleas.

The pleas added that as an alternate relief issue directions to the Law Commission of India to organize a comprehensive Report on Population Explosion within three months and suggest the ways to regulate it.