The Supreme Court has said that laws penalising people for having more than two children have lost their relevance, in a judgment delivered on 4 November 2026 by a bench of Justice P. S. Narasimha and Justice Alok Aradhe.
The case
The case, Mangala Bhimrao Ingle v. Additional Commissioner, Amravati Division, was about Ingle’s election as Sarpanch of Kakoda gram panchayat in Maharashtra, which was set aside because she had more than two children, under the Maharashtra Village Panchayats Act, 1959.
What the court said
The court said: “We are of the strong opinion that laws that 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.”
India’s Total Fertility Rate has fallen from 3.0 in 2003 to 1.9, below the replacement rate of 2.1.
Important: the laws were NOT struck down
The court did not strike the laws down. It referred its 2003 judgment in Javed v. State of Haryana — which had upheld such bars — to a larger Bench for reconsideration, stayed the proceedings in Ingle’s case (she remains Sarpanch for now), and said such laws violate reproductive autonomy under Article 21.
Seven states have repealed the norm, fifteen never had one, and six states — Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttarakhand — still retain it.
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