MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently helped a woman protect her identity and dignity by directing the Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths to insert the names of her foster parents on her birth certificate, without removing her biological parents’ names or insisting on legal adoption documents.
Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy passed the order on a petition filed by Durgadevi, a college student from Madurai, challenging the rejection of her application to include the names of her paternal uncle and aunt on her birth certificate as ‘father’ and ‘mother’.
Durgadevi stated in her petition that her biological father died a few months after her birth and her mother also deserted her and has never contacted her in the past 20 years. Her paternal uncle and aunt raised her as their own daughter.
Due to this, all her identity-related documents such as aadhaar card and community certificate, mentioned only her uncle and aunt as her parents, except her birth certificate, which mentioned her biological parents’ names.
This affected her right to be known as the daughter of her uncle and aunt and also caused prejudice to her education and career, Durgadevi claimed. However, it was rejected by the authorities in January by citing that she should be validly adopted as per the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956, to carry out such changes, prompting her to move the court.
She explained that she does not want to replace the names of her biological parents with that of her foster parents. She only sought to include both names in the certificate.
Justice Chakravarthy observed that dignity and right to construct one’s own identity with reference to gender, familial and societal contexts is part of the right to privacy. Moreover, the difference in parents’ names in certificates would lead to dispute in her identity and jeopardise her career, he noted.
The state government has an obligation not only to respect a child’s right to preserve her identity but also to provide her assistance to do so, the judge said.
Holding that no law would be violated by mentioning her uncle and aunt’s name below her biological parents by adding the suffix ‘foster’, he directed the petitioner to submit notarised affidavits of her uncle and aunt expressing their consent, with further directions to the chief registrar to include the names within two months.