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16. India has a total area of 3287263 Sq.Kms out of which only 2973193 Sq.Kms constitutes land. China has a total area of 9596960 Sq. Kms out of which 9326410 Sq. Kms is the land area. It is projected that if effective steps are not taken for population control, India would cross the 1.5 billion mark by 2030. The population growth of India is 1.2% as in 2012-2013 and in China it is 0.5%. The population density of India is 367 persons per Sq.Km. as against 142 persons per Sq.Km in China. India is 2.58 times more dense than China. It is estimated as in July 2017 that the population of India is 1281935911 and China is 1379302771. As such, the necessity for population control, therefore, requires no debate.

17. Needless to state, the amendment to these two Acts in the State of Maharashtra was apparently introduced to ensure that importance of family planning is brought to the notice of every WP/6993/2008 & ANR individual and the citizens are educated to have lesser children considering population explosion. Since the arena of politics appears to be very attractive to a large chunk of the population, the legislature, in its wisdom, thought it fit to restrict the political aspirations of those candidates who have more children, as a measure of ensuring population control and to popularize family planning from the doorstep of the peoples' representative. With this object, the disqualification was introduced under the 1958 Act and the 1961 Act. The fact situation in this case will therefore have to be visualized from the object of the State to control the growth of population.

therefore, the population control assumes a central importance for providing social and economic justice to the people of India (Usha Tandon, Reader, Faculty of Law, Delhi University, - Research Paper on Population Stabilisation, Delhi Law Review, Vol. XXIII 2001, pp. 125-131).

32. In the words of Bertand Russell, "Population explosion is more dangerous than Hydrogen Bomb." This explosive population over-growth is not confined to a particular country but it is a global phenomenon. India being the largest secular democracy has the population problem going side by side and directly impacting on its per capita income, and resulting in shortfall of food grains in spite of the green revolution, and has hampered improvement on the educational front and has caused swelling of unemployment numbers, creating a new class of pavement and slum-dwellers and leading to congestion in urban areas due to the migration of rural poor. (Paper by B.K. Raina in Population Policy and the Law, 1992, edited by B.P. Singh Sehgal, page 52).

34. The learned Advocates for the respondents and the learned Government Pleader Shri Girase, contend that as the legislature in Maharashtra, which introduced the disqualification clause, after sixteen years of the State of Haryana introducing the same, would indicate that the State of Maharashtra specifically desired to exclude the word 'living' with reference to the number of children had by a candidate.
35. Per contra, Shri Sapkal, learned Advocate submits that there are cases when a woman continuously delivers 'still born' children or is unable to deliver a live child and for example, has suffered three deliveries resulting in still born children prior to the date of the commencement. He, therefore, poses a question that, if such a woman delivers a child after the date of the commencement, would her total number of deliveries be counted resulting in her disqualification by concluding that she had four children or whether she could be termed as having only one child? He therefore, submits that the concept of WP/6993/2008 & ANR population control and small family is connected with restricting the number of children to two and not restricting the number of deliveries in case of such unfortunate mothers. A family with two or less children is the object. The Family Planning Programme never propagates restricting the number of attempts to have a child. It does not suggest that if a wife has had two deliveries and has delivered either still born babies or the child is born and dies within hours or days, such a family should resort to family planning and should remain childless.