Dhaka High Court asks government to control population

DHAKA - Asking the Bangladesh government to take measures to control the country’s population, the Dhaka High Court Thursday sought details of the population growth in the last 10 years.

Hearing a public suit, the court directed the health secretary to submit within four weeks the budgetary allocations and a report on the efforts of NGOs and other international bodies working to control the population, The Daily Star reported.

The suit, filed by four Supreme Court lawyers - Manzil Murshid, Sarwar Ahad Chowdhury, Asaduzzaman Siddique and Tapan Kumar Das - prayed for a direction to the government to take immediate steps, if needed by creating a separate and independent ministry, to control population in Bangladesh, identifying this as an extremely urgent concern for the country.

The court fixed Sep 26 for the next hearing.

With 156 million people till July 2009, Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.