End sterilisation camps, says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to finalise the National Health Policy by December 31, 2016, and end mass sterilisation camps, saying that the poor and tribal men and women cannot be reduced to mere statistics in the country’s population control campaigns.

• The court also slammed the Centre’s attitude in treating sterilisation as a mere “public health” issue coming under the States’ watch.

Important observations made by the court:

Mass sterilisation camps are perverse products of the Centre’s population control campaigns driven by informal targets and incentives. 

• They infringe on the “reproductive freedoms of the most vulnerable groups of society whose economic and social conditions make them easy targets to coercion”. 
• The Centre has also failed in its duty to effectively monitor sterilisation.

Background:

Mismanagement of sterilisation camps have led to the death of several persons in recent years in many states.