Bihar population control: JD(U) hits back at ally, says BJP speaking only half-truth
Just days after BJP’s Bihar unit chief Dr Sanjay Jaiswal’s suggestion that the government, to control state’s population, reward those with only two kids, the ruling party has accused BJP of misleading people on the issue.
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Bihar Nitish-BJP face-off live updates: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (File)Betraying their frosty relations again, the ruling JD (U) and ally BJP in Bihar are not of the same mind on population control. And the differences are growing.
Just days after BJP’s Bihar unit chief Dr Sanjay Jaiswal’s suggestion that the government, to control state’s population, reward those with only two kids, the ruling party has accused BJP of misleading people on the issue.
“The BJP has been giving out half-truths on the population of Bihar,” JD (U) MLC Neeraj Kumar told The Indian Express on Tuesday.
Jaiswal’s demand for 25 kg free ration and Ayushman health cards as an incentive to those who have only two children had come close on the heels of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar rejecting outright the Centre’s plan to bring in a population control law.
Reiterating Nitish’s assertion that “only education and awareness” can help bring down the population, Kumar said the BJP must first answer why the party-led NDA had rejected incentives to promote the two-child norm.
“The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had set up a population control commission that recommended giving benefits to those government officials who have no more than two children. But the NDA government shot down the idea and gave preference to education,” Kumar said.
Kumar said it is also wrong of the BJP to blame Muslims for population growth as the difference between Muslim and Hindu fertility rate “has come down from 1.10 in 1992 to 0.36 in latest health survey”.
“As per National Family Health Survey, Bihar’s fertility rate in 2019-21 was 2.98 against 3.41 in 2015-16. But it is a fact that in 2019-21, the fertility rate dipped fastest in Bihar after Nagaland, at 0.43 against the national average of 0.20,” Kumar said.
The JD (U) MLC also countered Jaiswal who had cited the state’s high population density as a justification for the population control incentives.
“Blaming high population density for state’s backwardness is fallacious. After all, Kerala has higher population density than Bihar and it has managed to put its fertility rate in control,” he said.
Apart from Jaiswal, other senior BJP leaders, such as Union minister Giriraj Singh and state minister Neeraj Singh Bablu, have raised the pitch for a population control law besides “some extraordinary measures” to control the population growth. Making a case for the “education and awareness model” Kumar reminded BJP how the Congress’ vasectomy drive in 1976 had failed.
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