New Delhi: Declining fertility rate and changing demographic trends have eroded the rationale for restrictions on people with more than two children from contesting local body elections, a Supreme Court bench said on Wednesday while referring the constitutional validity of the laws to a larger bench.
“We are of the strong opinion that the laws which penalise having more than two children have lost their relevance. The foundation of such laws, that is the fear of overpopulation, has crumbled due to demographic changes in the past few decades,” the bench of Justice P S Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe said.
A larger bench will reconsider the 2003 judgement in the Javed vs State of Haryana case, in which the Court upheld the constitutional validity of the two-child norm under the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act, 1994.
Odisha is among the states that follow this policy, Amicus Curiae Rukmini Bobde informed the Court. While seven states have repealed the provision, 15 do not have such a restriction, she said. Apart from Odisha, Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttarakhand are the states that continue to have the two-child norm.
India’s fertility rate had fallen from 3 in 2003, when the top court upheld the two-child norm, to 1.9 currently, the bench observed. The replacement fertility rate is 2.1, the level at which a generation can replace itself.
“So even though India’s population is not yet declining, the total fertility rate falling below the replacement rate would soon result in demographics transitioning to an older population, with a declining share of the working population,” the bench said.
This decision was taken by the bench while hearing a plea by Mangala Bhimrao Ingle, a former sarpanch of Kakoda Gram Panchayat in Maharashtra, who challenged her disqualification on the grounds that she had a third child.
Ingle was disqualified under Section 14 (1)(j-1) of the Maharashtra Village Panchayats Act, 1959, which bars people with more than two children from holding the post of a panchayat member or sarpanch. The law came into force in September 2000, as reported by The Indian Express.
In August 2025, the Bombay High Court had upheld her disqualification.
Raising concerns about the impact of such laws on people’s fundamental rights and their ability to participate in elections, the bench said: “Allowing such laws to stand excludes an entire class of citizens from political representation on grounds bearing little relevance to their capacity to hold public office,” it said.
Such restrictions force people to choose between having children and participating in democratic processes, affecting their right to reproductive autonomy under Article 21 of the Constitution, the Court observed.