Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat on Saturday said if the five-point programme, put forward by late Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency to check population growth, had been implemented effectively then the situation in the country would have been different.
"Unfortunately these programmes were not taken seriously by the bureaucracy and they were put on the backburner. This resulted in the 1977 general election being contested against the issues of nasbandi [vasectomy] and Emergency," Shekhawat said while delivering a lecture organised by the Indore Press Club.
Urging the media to launch a campaign against population growth, corruption and inefficient public distribution system, the vice-president said at the time of independence the country had a population of 36 crore and today it is over 102 crore, which is a big challenge in the era of globalisation.