Live Law, February 12, 2020
A private member bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on February 7 seeking to introduce a Directive Principle in the Constitution with respect to population control measures.
The Bill seeks to amend the Constitution with a view to make a provision by the State to discourage the people from increasing their family and encourage them to keep their family limited to two children only
The bill floated by Shiv Sena MP Anil Desai proposes to amend Constitution to introduce Article 47A which states:
“47A. The State shall promote small family norms by offering incentives in taxes, employment, education etc. to its people who keep their family limited to two children and shall withdraw every concession from and deprive such incentives to those not adhering to small family norm, to keep the growing population under control.’
As the reason for the bill, it was stated :
“Population explosion will cause many problems for our future generations. We have to be concerned about population explosion. The Centre as well as State Governments should launch schemes to tackle it. Our natural resources are extremely over burdened. The rate of growth of any country is directly related to size of its population. Natural resources like air, water, land, woods etc. are subjected to over exploitation because of over population. Today, there is a greater need to keep a strong check on the increase of our population”.
A Member of Parliament (MP) who is not a Minister in the Union Cabinet is called a Private Member. Bills introduced by such members are called Private Member’s Bills. The afternoon sessions of Fridays are slotted for introduction of private member bills.
As per a research by PPRS Legislative Research (PRS),only 14 Private Member Billss have become laws in India since independence. No PMB has become law since 1970.
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