After Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu spoke about having more children, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin also toed his line advising people to have more offspring. Stalin’s comments asking “Why not aim for 16 children?” during the wedding ceremony has reignited the debate on delimitation in India.
Stalin was speaking at a wedding ceremony, organised by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR and CE) department at the Maruntheeswarar temple in Chennai on Monday. Referring to an old adage in Tamil, “pathinaarum petter peruvazhvu vaazhga” meaning 'live a blessed life with 16 different types of wealth', Stalin said how the blessings for the newlyweds have changed over time. The 16 different types of wealth range from cows, land, education and children.
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Mentioning all the 16 types of wealth referred to through the adage, Stalin jokingly referred to the delimitation process and the danger of reduction in the number of Lok Sabha seats and asked, “Why not aim for 16 children?”
Incidentally, on October 19, Chandrababu Naidu renewed the debate on the population imbalance between north and south India. Naidu’s government after taking over in June this year had repealed the two-child policy for local body elections.
Naidu said that his government is “considering to incentivise the families with more children in order to encourage couples to expand their families. We have already repealed the earlier law that barred individuals with more than two children from contesting local body elections, and we will introduce a new law allowing only those with more than two children to contest.”
Naidu, while referring to the fertility rate in the South Indian states, said many villages only have elderly people living there.
On Monday through his speech, Stalin jokingly strengthened the voice of Naidu, making it obvious that the southern states cannot afford to lose any number of Lok Sabha seats in the name of delimitation. The fall in the number of seats will apparently reduce the political influence of the southern states in the union government, which the regional parties in south India, particularly the DMK have been arguing.
DMK had earlier said that the delimitation process is like penalising states like Tamil Nadu for achieving the population goals.