The Uttar Pradesh government is contemplating enacting a law to bar the parents having more than two children from availing benefits of the government welfare schemes.
The law was intended to check the increasing population of India's most populous state.
According to the sources, the UP Law Commission is preparing a draft proposal in this regard which will be submitted to the state government shortly.
The chairman of the Commission Justice (retd) Aditya Nath Mittal said that the increasing population had proved to be a drain on the resources of the state.
''Increasing population is responsible for several problems of the state, unemployment, children not getting admission in schools and no place in the hospitals,'' Mittal said.
Sources said that government welfare schemes include subsidies on food grains from ration shops, subsidised housing and state government employment.
Although the government officials denied that the new policy had anything to do with any specific religion, opposition parties slammed the BJP government for targetting a particular community.
''BJP has always been against a particular community....they have been on the receiving end under the current dispensation,'' said a senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader.
He also attributed the move to the state government's attempts to hide its failures in controlling the Covid 19 pandemic in the state.
Saffron leaders, however, welcomed the move and said that it would help check the growing population of the state.