No, Uttar Pradesh has not implemented two-child policy: Know the truth

The claim that the Uttar Pradesh government has implemented the two-child policy as of June 7, 2024, is false.

What is the claim?

An image of Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister Yogi Adityanath seated at a table with a group of people has been shared on social media claiming that the state government has implemented two-child policy.

Screenshot of social media post claiming that two-child policy has been implemented in Uttar Pradesh. (Source: X/Screenshot)

On June 7, 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) shared this photo (archived here) with the caption, "Two child law implemented in Uttar Pradesh If you have more than two children then there is no government facility. No government job, no PM ration, no house (sic)." Archived versions of more such posts can be viewed here, here, and here.

Some users have also shared a short clip from a news channel where the anchor can be heard saying that the chief minister has come up with a new plan for population control. An archive of this post can be found here.

However, this claim is misleading. While a draft bill for such a policy has been submitted to the state government, it has not been passed and formulated as a law.

 

Screenshots of the claims made online. (Source: X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

Here are the facts

A reverse image search on the image led us to a post by the official X (archived here) account of the Office of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister on June 6, 2024. The post caption stated that the pictures were taken during a meeting to review the state's public welfare projects.

The post makes no mention of the two-child policy law being implemented or discussed.

Further, the news clip being shared is also old. We found the original video on the YouTube channel of the Hindi media house Republic Bharat (archived here), published on July 11, 2021. The now-viral portion can be seen around the 16-minute mark and ends at 18:11 seconds. The news anchor says that the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission has recommended that people with more than two children be barred from government jobs; and be ineligible for certain government welfare schemes and benefits.

What about the draft bill?

On conducting a keyword search on the two-child policy, we found news reports from 2021 which mentioned that the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission had shared a draft of the proposed bill on population control in 2021 with the state government.

According to the draft bill titled Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation, and Welfare) Bill, 2021, couples with more than two children would not be allowed to apply for government jobs, seek promotions, or benefit from government welfare schemes. A similar policy is in place in Assam, which bars parents with more than two children from government jobs under the Assam Public Services (Application of Small Family Norms in Direct Recruitment) Rules, 2019.

Logically Facts spoke to Syed Ahmad Hussain Rizvi, the personal secretary to Justice Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, chairman of the Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission. "The proposal had been shared with the government in 2021 and is pending with them. No new proposals or implementations have happened since," Srivastava said.

We found no official announcement that Uttar Pradesh has implemented this law. As per our research, the Bill is still pending with the state government. We checked the official website of the Uttar Pradesh government, where the laws implemented in 2024 are listed and the two-child policy doesn't feature among them.

The verdict

The claim that the Uttar Pradesh government has implemented the two-child policy as of June 7, 2024, is false. An official working with the Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission informed us that the bill is still pending and has not been implemented yet.

Disclaimer: This story was originally published by Logically Facts, and republished by HT Digital as part of the Shakti Collective.