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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Birth certificate single mom's right

Birth certificate single mom's right

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published Published on Jul 7, 2015   modified Modified on Jul 7, 2015
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: When a single woman or unwed mother applies for her child's birth certificate, it must be issued on the basis of her affidavit and without insisting that she disclose the name of the father, the Supreme Court ruled today.

The court also held that an unwed Christian mother could assume the guardianship of her child without issuing prior notice to the father for permission as laid down in an 1890 law applicable to the community.

The directive on the issuance of birth certificates will apply to all unwed mothers in the country irrespective of their religion. The order on guardianship will be confined to Christian women as the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, applies only to the community. Hindus and Muslims are governed by their respective guardianship acts.

"In today's society, where women are increasingly choosing to raise their children alone, we see no purpose in imposing an unwilling and unconcerned father on an otherwise viable family nucleus. It seems to us that a man who has chosen to forsake his duties and responsibilities is not a necessary constituent for the well-being of the child," the bench of Justices Vikramjit Sen and A.M. Sapre said.

The mother's intent in insisting that the father should not be "publicly notified seems to us not to be unreasonable", the bench added.

The bench upheld a petition filed by an unwed Christian woman who had challenged a Delhi High Court judgment in August 2011. The high court had upheld a civil court's directive that her plea for guardianship of her son could not be entertained unless she disclosed the name and address of the father of the child.

The Supreme Court ruled today: "The law is dynamic and is expected to diligently keep pace with time and the legal conundrums and enigmas it presents.... We direct that if a single parent/unwed mother applies for the issuance of a birth certificate for a child born from her womb, the authorities concerned may only require her to furnish an affidavit to this effect, and must thereupon issue the birth certificate, unless there is a court direction to the contrary."

The court explained why the ruling would go beyond an individual case.

"Trite though it is, we emphasise that it is the responsibility of the State to ensure that no citizen suffers any inconvenience or disadvantage merely because the parents fail or neglect to register the birth," it said.

"Nay, it is the duty of the State to take requisite steps for recording every birth of every citizen. To remove any possible doubt, the direction pertaining to issuance of the birth certificate is intendedly not restricted to the circumstances or the parties before us."

Until now, in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, for instance, it was mandatory to mention the father's name for obtaining a birth certificate.

The birth certificate can be issued against the signature of the mother but she has to mention the name of the child's father. The application form in Calcutta has a column for the father's name.

Once the form is submitted, the contents are fed into a digital system where the column for the father's name is a mandatory field, which means the system will not accept the application if the space is left blank.

"We will think about what to do in case we receive such an application (from an unwed or single mother)," said Atin Ghosh, mayoral council member, health, in Calcutta.

The woman who had filed the appeal in the Supreme Court had given birth to her son in 2010 and raised him without any assistance from or involvement of his father.

Keen to make her son her nominee in all her savings schemes and insurance policies, she had applied for guardianship. But she was told by authorities to get a formal guardianship certificate as the 1890 law considers the father is the natural guardian of a Christian child. She approached the Supreme Court after her petitions were dismissed by the lower courts.

The Supreme Court upheld the woman's plea and asked the civil court to reconsider her application for guardianship.

The apex court said the "mother is best suited to care for her offspring, so aptly and comprehensively conveyed in Hindi by the word ' mamata'".

But it added: "The uninvolved parent is... not precluded from approaching the guardian court to quash, vary or modify its orders if the best interests of the child so indicate."

The court also referred to an "unaddressed constitutional expectation".

"Christian unwed mothers in India are disadvantaged when compared to their Hindu counterparts who are the natural guardians of their illegitimate children by virtue of their maternity alone, without the requirement of any notice to the putative fathers," it said.

"It would be apposite for us to underscore that our Directive Principles envision the existence of a uniform civil code, but this remains an unaddressed constitutional expectation."

Similarly, the bench said, Mohammedan law accords the custody of illegitimate children to the mother and her relations.

The Telegraph, 7 July, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150707/jsp/frontpage/story_30118.jsp#.VZtwafk1t_k


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