A member of the Shinshiro Municipal Assembly in Aichi Prefecture proposed distributing “punctured condoms” to married residents to bolster the city’s dwindling population, the legislature’s secretariat said Friday.

Independent Assemblyman Tomonaga Osada was verbally reprimanded Wednesday for the controversial proposal last month and told his remarks “lacked dignity for an assembly member and consideration” by the assembly chairman, who decided to delete them from the minutes of the June 18 meeting.

Osada, 49, is serving his third term in Shinshiro, which has a population of about 49,000. He said he wanted the people of the city to “feel friendly toward City Hall,” which is deemed conservative. He also wanted more people to raise children in Shinshiro but said he would like to apologize for making an “inappropriate” proposal.

Osada’s “punctured condoms” proposal became widely known after another member of the assembly from the Japanese Communist Party wrote about it in his blog on Monday.