The Supreme Court has said that laws disqualifying people with more than two children from contesting local body elections have lost their relevance, and has referred its 2003 judgment upholding such rules to a larger bench for reconsideration.

The judgment was delivered on Wednesday, November 4, by a bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe in the case of Mangala Bhimrao Ingle, a former sarpanch of Kakoda gram panchayat in Maharashtra who lost her post after the birth of her third child. The bench said it was of the "strong opinion" that laws penalising people for having more than two children had lost their relevance, because the fear of overpopulation on which they were founded had crumbled.

The court pointed to India's sharply changed demographics. When the Supreme Court upheld the two-child norm in 2003, in the case of Javed v. State of Haryana, the country's total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman has over her lifetime — stood at 3. It has since fallen to 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1, the bench noted. "If we fail to take note of such demographic changes, India will face serious consequences," the judges said.

The case before the court

Mangala Bhimrao Ingle was disqualified as sarpanch under Section 14(1)(j-1) of the Maharashtra Village Panchayats Act, 1959, which bars people with more than two living children from holding the post. She challenged the disqualification, arguing that the 2003 precedent in Javed, which had upheld a similar bar under the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act, needed to be reconsidered in light of today's demographic reality.

The bench agreed that the question required a fresh look, but it did not strike down any state law. Because a two-judge bench cannot overrule a three-judge ruling, it referred the matter to a larger bench, directing the court registry to place the judgment before the Chief Justice of India for the constitution of an appropriate bench. In the meantime, the interim protection allowing Ingle to remain sarpanch will continue until her appeal is decided.

What happens next

Two-child disqualification rules remain in force in several states until a larger bench rules, but the judgment puts their future in doubt. Seven states have already withdrawn the two-child condition, while 15 states do not have such a policy at all, according to information placed before the court. The larger bench will now have to weigh the original population-control rationale against changed fertility patterns and questions of reproductive autonomy.

The ruling also has a political dimension. Local body elections are the entry point to public life for lakhs of Indians, particularly women and first-time candidates in rural areas, and disqualification on the basis of family size has long been criticised as punishing the poorest. The court's reference means that argument will now be tested at the highest level — though, as the bench itself made clear, the final word will take time.