The passport application form has a field that asks the father’s name. In a new ruling by the Delhi High Court, to have only the mother’s name on her child’s passport application form, is sufficient and perfectly legal.
A single mother moved the Court asking for reissuance of her daughter’s passport without the name of her biological father. She claimed that the father had refused to accept their child as she was a girl, due to which she divorced him. She stated that all the daughter’s official record and educational records do not mention her father’s name. She also stated that earlier the passport office had issued passports to two girls in the year 2005 and 2011, which did not mention their father’s name.
In this recent ruling at the Delhi High Court, Justice Manmohan directed the Regional Passport Office (RPO) to accept the application form of the girl child of a single parent (mother) without insisting upon naming her father. Even as the passport office counsel told the court that the computerised passport application form has a column regarding the father’s name and it must be filled, the court directed them to modify their software. The Court said that technology is intended to ease and facilitate transactions and cannot be the basis for creating and defeating anybody’s legal rights. It said that authorities can insist upon the name of biological father in the passport only if it is a requirement by law, like standing instructions, manuals etc.
This is undoubtedly a welcome move for the children of single mothers.
What is noteworthy is the fact that the Court acknowledged the need of the hour by stating - “This court also takes judicial notice of the fact that families of single parents are on the increase due to various reasons like unwed mothers, sex workers, surrogate mothers, rape survivors, children abandoned by father and also children born through IVF technology.”
Times and relationships are changing; the rules and the laws of the land need to accept, adapt and initiate the change.