Kerala HC directs inclusion of father’s name ‘omitted’ in birth certificate of child born through IVF

Kochi: High court, in a significant judgment, directed the authorities to include the father’s name in the birth certificate of a child born through IVF, despite the relevant column having been left blank earlier owing to a misunderstanding between the child’s parents.

Justice P V Kunhikrishnan issued the ruling while allowing a petition filed by the parents of a 14-year-old girl challenging an order of a grama panchayat secretary rejecting their request to include the father’s name in the child’s birth certificate. The petitioners submitted that the girl was born in 2012 through IVF treatment while they were in a relationship. Owing to a dispute between them at the time, the father’s name was omitted from the birth certificate, which recorded the child as being born to a single mother.

Subsequently, the couple got married and had another child, whose birth certificate carries the father’s name. They later obtained an order from a family court declaring them to be the biological parents of the girl. Based on the order, they applied to have the father’s name added to the girl’s birth certificate. However, the application was rejected on the grounds that the birth had originally been registered under the single-parent category and that the father’s name could not be incorporated later. Aggrieved by the decision, they approached HC.

While considering the petition, the court observed that the issue was not one of paternity but of posterity. For a child, the blank space against the father’s name in a birth certificate is not merely an empty column but a question mark over her legitimacy, a whisper of stigma and a wound inflicted by her parents’ past conflict, the court said. Noting that the Registration of Births and Deaths Act contains no specific provision permitting such a correction, the court observed that its role was not to count commas, full stops or blanks in statutes and rules, but to ensure that the law does not become an instrument of psychological cruelty against a child who was never at fault.

Accordingly, the court directed the authorities to issue a fresh birth certificate incorporating the father’s name.