Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday urged the people of the state to have babies immediately. Stalin's comments came amid the ongoing spat between the Centre and his government. Stalin urged newly married couples to plan families immediately. While attending a wedding function, the Tamil Nadu CM the state's population control measures has put it at disadvantage.
"But now with policies such as delimitation that the Union Government is planning to implement, we cannot say that. We focused on family planning and succeeded and were pushed into a situation such as this. So I would now urge newlyweds to immediately have babies and give them good Tamil names," Stalin said as quoted by NDTV.
For the unversed, delimitation is a process of redrawing boundaries of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies based on the changes in population over the period of time.
The delimitation exercise might be conducted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government in 2026. Stalin also said that the efficient family measures had plunged the southern states into a disadvantage.
BJP spokesperson CR Keshavan had slammed the Tail Nadu Chief Minister. He said that the ruling DMK had resorted to "desperate and dishonest diversionary drama", reported NDTV.
Meanwhile, Stalin, has urged all political parties to participate in the all-party meeting convened by the Tamil Nadu government on March 5 to discuss the issue of delimitation.
Speaking at a public event in Nagapattinam on Monday, CM Stalin called on parties that have chosen to boycott the meeting to reconsider their decision, emphasising that the discussion is about protecting Tamil Nadu's rights. "The Union government is attempting to impose the three-language policy on Tamil Nadu and is conspiring to reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies under the guise of delimitation," he alleged as quoted by IANS.
He also warned that if delimitation is carried out solely based on population, Tamil Nadu could lose up to eight Lok Sabha seats. At present, Tamil Nadu has 39 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Even if the total number of parliamentary seats in India increases, states like Tamil Nadu - where population control measures have been effective -could be disproportionately affected, he argued.
However, there is no official announcement in this regard. Earlier, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that southern states would not be disadvantaged in the Delimitation process.
The Tamil Nadu government has also strongly opposed implementing the New Education Policy (NEP) of 2020, raising concern over the "three-language formula" and alleging that the Centre wants to 'impose' Hindi.
