Background: Inspite of being the first countries of the world to launch a nation wide family planning program, the contraceptive prevalence of India still remains low. This may be due to the influence of socio-demographic and cultural factors on family planning decisions.

Objectives:
— To determine the prevalence of contraceptive use among currently married women and identify factors affecting the
contraceptive use.
— To find out the reasons responsible for non-use of contraceptives

Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in tea gardens of Siliguri subdivision of Darjeeling district, India among 1029 currently married women in reproductive age group. Information was collected regarding sociodemographic variable, knowledge and practice of contraception and reasons for non use of contraception. Simple descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression was used to analyse data with the help of SPSS 16 software.

Results: 921 women were aware about any method of contraception; however, only 362 women were currently using any contraceptive method. The current use of contraception was found to be associated with age, religion, caste, literacy status, number of living children of the woman and awareness about contraceptive use.

Conclusion:The contraceptive prevalence in the study area was quite low than the national figures which necessitate the need for the programme managers to take into account not only the concept of reproductive health education but also motivation of couples about use of contraception.