Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday asked the Muslim community in the state to adopt a “decent family planning” policy to deal with poverty and other social problems, the Hindustan Times reported.

“We want to work with the minority Muslim community to control population,” he said, while speaking at a press conference to mark the completion of 30 days of his government. “The root cause of issues such as poverty, land encroachment etc, lies in uncontrolled population growth. I think we can put an end to a lot of social problems in Assam if the Muslim community adopts decent family planning norms.”

Sarma said that his government will work towards educating the women of the community so that the problem can be tackled effectively. The government cannot allow encroachment of temple and forest lands and members of the community have also assured the government that they do not want encroachment of these lands, he said, according to PTI.

Sarma’s comment is in consonance with a conspiracy theory propagated mainly by the right-wing, which suggests that the fertility rate among Muslims in India is much higher than that in the Hindu community. However, data and experts do not agree to this theory.

The last Census in India, held in 2011, showed that Hindus comprise 79.8% of the population while Muslims make up less than a fifth, at 14.2%. The proportion of Hindus relative to the country’s population declined by 0.7%, according to that census, while the proportion of Muslims grew by 0.8%.

“Data also show that the Muslim fertility rate has come down more than the Hindu fertility rate,” AL Sharada of Population First, a non-government organisation in Mumbai, told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Sarma on Thursday, also said that the Assam Assembly would pass a new law against illegal cattle smuggling in the next session. He said that the existing laws do not consider transit of cattle coming from other states through Assam as illegal.

Sarma took oath as Assam chief minister on May 10 after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance won a clear majority, winning 75 of the 126 seats in the recent Assembly elections in the state.