Supreme Court declares two-child penalty laws irrelevant as India's fertility rate falls below replacement level

Key facts

• On November 4, 2026, a Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice P.S. Narasimha, with Justice Alok Aradhe, held in a 37-page judgment that laws penalising having more than two children have lost their relevance due to India's falling fertility rate.
• The court said the foundation of such laws, the fear of overpopulation, has crumbled due to demographic changes, and called for its 2003 judgment in Javed versus State of Haryana, which upheld such penal laws, to be revisited by a larger Bench.
• India's Total Fertility Rate has fallen from 3.02 to 1.9, below the replacement rate of 2.1.
• The judgment noted the share of persons aged 60 and above rose from about 8.3% in 2014 to 9.7% in 2024, with projections placing it at nearly 15% by 2036.
• The ruling came on a petition by Mangala Bhimrao Ingle, whose election as Sarpanch of Kakoda gram panchayat in Maharashtra was set aside under Section 14(1)(j-1) of the Maharashtra Village Panchayats Act, 1959, for having a third child in 2014 and contesting the 2022 panchayat elections.
• Justice Narasimha held that laws linking motherhood to political representation violate Article 21, impinging on the right to reproductive autonomy, and the court allowed the appellant to continue as Sarpanch while staying proceedings against her.