india

Updated: Dec 04, 2016 18:28 IST

Union minister Giriraj Singh on Sunday said after ‘notebandi’ (demonetisation), there is an urgent need to make laws for ‘nasbandi’ (sterilisation) in the country.

The minister of state for micro, small and medium enterprises had advocated sterilisation to control population growth at a function in his parliamentary constituency Nawada on Saturday.

Singh said the India needs a strong population control act including sterilisation as the country was facing a population boom impeding development and social stability.

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“ India has 17 % of the world population and adds population equal to Australia each year. The country only has 2.5% of land mass of the globe with only 4.2% of water resources. In this scenario, the population explosion in the country is proving to be a big roadblock for development. We need population control act to tide over the problem,” he said.

Singh is the second senior BJP leader in Bihar who has advocated sterilisation after demonetisation. Last week, former union minister and senior BJP leader Sanjay Paswan said sterilisation will help control the population of the country.

Singh told HT that he had been advocating the same for a long time as it was the need of the hour to control population growth. He, however, insisted that it would be wrong to link his support for sterilisation as directed against any particular community emphasising that population control measures were in practice in many countries.

“ There are population control laws in Bangladesh and Malaysia. So, there is nothing wrong if it happens in India,” he said.

Read | There is a need to increase population of Hindus in India: Giriraj Singh

The MoS is considered a hardliner in his party and his controversial statements have raised eyebrows and embarrassed the BJP before.

In October this year, the minister of state had said Hindus should seriously consider increasing their population in the country by producing more children. He then recalled that none other than RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had advised Hindus in August last year to produce more children and said no laws can prevent them from reproducing more children.

He had also proposed to revoke the voting rights of people with more than two children to control population, in April earlier this year.

During the 2014 parliamentary poll campaign, Singh courted controversy when he said that critics of the then BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi should go to Pakistan.

Also read | Revoke voting rights of people with more than two kids: Giriraj Singh