Apply ‘small family’ rule uniformly: Bombay HC to Maharashtra

The HC bench asked why the small family rule was not applied to employees of the local bodies at villages, tehsils and district councils, though similar provisions were applied to their elected representatives by introducing a disqualification clause

Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court on Tuesday asked the Maharashtra government to uniformly apply “small family” rule to all government employees, local self government bodies and other state instrumentalities and delete the rule that allowed for exceptions .

The court’s direction came while hearing a plea by Ramnath Sasane, an employee of a village panchayat in Ahmednagar district (Photo Courtesy/bombayhighcourt website)

The division bench of justice Ravindra Ghuge and justice SG Mehare held Rule 6 of the Maharashtra Civil Services (Declaration of Small Family) Rules, 2005, allowing relaxation to a certain category of people to be “counter productive and harmful” .

The HC bench asked why the rule was not applied to the employees of the local bodies at villages, tehsils and district councils, though similar provisions were applied to their elected representatives by introducing a disqualification clause.

“As such, we express our disapproval to Rule 6 of the 2005 Rules and request the state government to delete Rule 6 and make these rules applicable uniformly to all employees of the state government, state instrumentalities, local authorities and local bodies, if the laudable object of controlling the growth of population is to be achieved,” said the bench.

The court’s direction came while hearing a plea by Ramnath Sasane, an employee of a village panchayat in Ahmednagar district, who had challenged a show cause notice asking why action should not be taken against him for flouting the small family - maximum two children - norm.

Sasane argued that the 2005 rules were not applicable to him as he was employed months before it came into force in March 2005, and because he was not a government employee, as contemplated under the 2005 rules.

HC refused to entertain his petition. The court, however, took a serious note of amicus curiae, advocate Ajay Deshpande’s, submissions about the necessity of deleting Rule 6 for arresting population explosion.