Overview
- Assam’s Health and Family Welfare Department issued the Population and Women Empowerment Policy (Amendment), 2025 with immediate effect, signed by Commissioner and Secretary Dr P Ashok Babu.
- Members of Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Tea Garden Tribes, and the Moran and Matak communities may now have up to three children for eligibility in government jobs, local elections and Self Help Group incentives.
- The two-child ceiling continues to apply to the general population and to serving government employees, who are instructed to model compliance, and individuals marrying below the legal age become ineligible for state jobs and employment schemes.
- The policy applies prospectively to live and legally adopted children, prohibits disowning a child to bypass limits, and permits case-by-case exemptions for multiple births or differently abled children.
- The government signalled plans to legislate two-child limits for Panchayat and municipal candidates and to ask the Centre to extend comparable norms to MLAs.