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An Indian man who sued the authorities over his own birth because his mother conceived after undergoing sterilisation in a state clinic, has lost his decades-long legal battle. Rajesh Laljibhai Patel's mother launched a lawsuit against the government of India's western Gujarat state two years after he was born in 1985. Vijuben Patel, who already had four children, had undergone a sterilisation procedure at a camp organised by authorities in the state six years earlier. She argued that government should pay for her son's maintenance, citing medical negligence, and named him as a plaintiff in the case even though he...

A leader of Hindu Mahasabha today stoked a controversy saying Muslims and Christians must undergo sterilisation to restrict their growing population which was posing a threat to Hindus. “The population of Muslims and Christians is growing day by day. To rein in this, Centre will have to impose emergency, and Muslims and Christians will have to be forced to undergo sterilisation so that they can’t increase their numbers,” vice president of All India Hindu Mahasabha, Sadhvi Deva Thakur told reporters here. She also exhorted Hindus to have more children and increase their population so as to have an effect on...

A famously-rude Kiwi politician has proposed a new solution to the country's dire child abuse problem - sterilise the "underclass". Michael Laws - who stirred up contempt by calling the late Tongan King a "bloated brown slug" - has again hit headlines for the wrong reasons. The regional mayor claimed that the children of social security beneficiaries, drug addicts and criminals had little chance in life and were prime targets for child abuse. Sterilising their parents was the best solution, he brazenly suggested. "If we gave $10,000 to certain people and said 'we'll voluntarily sterilise you' then all of society...

Teachers told to find sterilisation 'volunteers' in villages By Peter Foster in New Delhi (Filed: 25/02/2006) Thousands of primary school teachers have been ordered to find two "volunteers" for sterilisation as part of a draconian solution to India's population explosion. The order was issued to 6,400 teachers in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state (pop 170 million), where the teachers have been given until March 31 to meet the "sterilisation target" or face disciplinary action. The plan, imposed by a district magistrate in the southern city of Allahabad, is a radical approach to dealing with India's population of almost 1.1...

BANGALORE : The Legislative Council on Friday witnessed an interesting debate with a majority of the members, particularly those from medical background, gunning for mandatory sterilisation of married men, to check population explosion. When Jalaja Naik (Congress) raised the issue of women being forced to undergo sterilisation, many others joined in. M R Tanga (BJP) and M P Nadagouda (AIPJD), who are doctors by profession, contended that unless men were compelled to go in for sterilisation, no population control measure would succeed. "There is enormous social and family pressure on women to undergo tubectomy. Indian men have wrong notions about...